WHY INTERNATIONAL SEO STRATEGISTS ARE NOT PLEASED WITH GOOGLE'S REL=NOFOLLOW ANNOUNCEMENT

15.11.19 11:35 PM By Stephen Merrigan

WHY INTERNATIONAL SEO STRATEGISTS ARE NOT PLEASED WITH GOOGLE'S REL="NOFOLLOW" ANNOUNCEMENT

Rel=nofollow has set a precedent over the years to promote the circulation of untrue information and link schemes. Google can barely trace some of the shady parts of the web, and this influenced the decision to put an end to it after their announcement.

What does rel="nofollow" entail? Simply put, it involves linking a website to another web page by adding a rel="nofollow" tag to the link so that Google will be unable to follow the link source. Rel="nofollow" is one of the most effective ways to rank high, and if a fake news site, for instance, can get listed on sites with high domain while including rel="nofollow" in the links, these sites will begin to trend globally and lead to misinformation for millions of Google users.

Why was Rel="nofollow" created?

Google had an issue in 2005, where black-hat SEO tricksters found a way to trick Google's algorithm by posting comments on the high ranking web page and adding their links to those comments. This led to Google's algorithm ranking these websites high in search results. Also, companies were receiving money from people so they can post links on the companies' sites. The companies benefited by receiving money, the people benefited by getting backlinks, but the users were not benefiting so much because they ended up opening spam links that were not useful to them. This forced Google to introduce rel="nofollow," which did the job of informing search engines not to follow the source of a link. Rel="nofollow" made sure the websites did not receive backlinks, which made it near impossible for them to rank high. Simply put, any website with a rel-nofollow is telling users that "We do not endorse this website."

Until recently, rel-nofollow was a directive, but in September 2019, Google announced that it was time for nofollow to evolve.

How does this change matter for SEO?

According to Victor Pan, an SEO Strategist at Hubspot, the change is a necessary one. News websites need to be profitable, and that was why guest contributors could insert backlinks into posts on major websites and new publications after getting paid. The implication of this was that any link could be inserted into these posts as long as they paid for it. Rel="nofollow" made it difficult for them to do that, which was quite laudable at the time. However, even with rel="nofollow," if sites choose to use a platform like Facebook, which is outside Google's purview to amplify their message, then there is a problem, and the purpose of rel="nofollow" will be defeated.

So, for Google to fully understand the extent to which misinformation is being passed around and why things like fake news sites can suddenly rank high, they have to be able to follow rel="nofollow" links. Sometimes legitimate websites link to these phony sites because they think they are real because they have high rankings.

In spite of all this, International SEO strategists are upset about a bigger change to rel-nofollow, which is the fact that rel-nofollow changed from a directive to a strong hint. A "directive" means search engines will respect rel-nofollow unconditionally, while a "strong hint" means that Google can disagree with your opinion and decision.

An example of a strong hint is if you do all the work of optimizing web pages for SEO, and yet Google ignores it.

In addition, Google is asking Global SEO strategists that will be making use of rel-nofollow to be specific whether the content is user-generated or sponsored. SEO strategists are of the opinion that they do not need to do that because it might not matter. However, Google believes it will help them understand the links that they should not be following.

Another frustration is the lack of control. Google is taking back control and passing the message that even though these solutions are available for SEO strategists, they do not have full control over them.

When asked if strategists can decide not to use rel="nofollow" since it looks like it is going to be causing a lot of problems, Pan says it could lead to further issues.

In summary, the three problems that the new Google's rel="nofollow" announcement will cause are;

·         It is no longer a directive but a strong hint that it will be hard for SEO strategists to see the benefit of implementing these into their web pages.

·         Implementing rel="nofollow" is not more difficult than ever before because strategists now have to specify the type of rel="nofollow" they want to use.

·         Google may ignore rel="nofollow," which will give some untrustworthy links backlink power, which will give people the chance to pay to have their links on high ranking sites.


References

Forsey, Caroline. “3 Reasons Why SEO's Are Upset About Google's Rel="Nofollow" Announcement.” HubSpot Blog, 7 Nov. 2019, blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seos-are-upset-about-relnofollow-announcement.