Follow vs. Nofollow Links in Knol

Knol linking

Our policy


When Knol launched, we began with all pages marked with a blanket "nofollow" directive. This means that Google and other search engines would not crawl outbound links from knols, and those links would not flow PageRank to the pages to which they point. The advice Google provides webmasters is to make links "nofollow" if they represent untrusted or low quality user contributed content.

We are now at a point where we "trust" a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a "follow" directive for links within such knols.

Not all links are "follow". Some links will permanently remain rel="nofollow", including:
  • Links found within comments
  • Our automatically generated links to "similar content on the web".
  • Brand new pages and recently-added authors are liable to remain "nofollow" for a period of time.

Beyond that, the rules determining which links and pages use "follow" vs "nofollow" will change over time as we adjust our policies to find the right balance for users and search engines



Example


For those of you who are technically inclined, here is an example. Visit this high quality sample knol on Backpacking, and select "View Source" in your browser. Search for where "follow" and "nofollow" appears on the page. You should see that the page itself gets a global "follow" directive, but certain individual links get rel="nofollow" directives.

FAQs

Q: Are there steps I can take to help my chances of getting into the "follow" club? Is the decision based on volume of non-spammy Knols? I realize there will not likely be a magic formula, but some guidance would be appreciated.
 
  • Follow our Content Policy
  • Follow our Best Practices
  • Beware of performing behavior that is "spammy". Produce knols that serve the public and not a narrow commercial interest. Avoid bulk uploading of non-unique content.
  • Be patient, as our signals do fluctuate over time, and it may take a while for a new user to accrue some trustworthiness.
  • If you know that you satisfy all of the above, you can contact us at knolhelp@google.com and report it as a possible bug.

References

  1. Wikipedia article on "nofollow"
  2. Andy Henry's knol on "nofollow and dofollow"
  3. The Google blog on preventing comment spam.

Comments


Guna Nadar

What is the big deal?

"rel=Follow or No follow" is something which is included only in Google's SERP algorithm. It is believed that Google provides credit to the out going link (if a do follow) if linked from an authority page. Other search engines doesn't care about it. The rel=nofollow attribute's main purpose was to block the search engines from visiting some private Page/website which has a content which is not for the general public. G took it as a factor in their ranking and all the hue and cry about follow and no follow tags.

In general I appreciate Google has made Knol as a "do follow" This will encourage more content(hopefully good ones) to be input on on Knol..

Last edited Dec 18, 2008 9:17 PM
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Leroy Davis

content="index,follow"

That was to the point. My only question would be why would you need a global index/follow meta tag? The index/follow tag is the default condition a robot does. The only thing I can think of is that the tag started as a 'nofollow', and Google is just removing the "no" portion.

I removed the index/follow tag from my web site over the last year or so.... while I still use individual nofollow tags on some of the links I'm unsure of.

Last edited Nov 21, 2008 4:38 PM
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gaby de wilde

noindex

Isn't it easier and better to mark everything outside the main content with <noindex>...</noindex>?

Last edited Jan 16, 2009 5:36 PM
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Gregory Kohs

What does THIS actually mean?

"...we 'trust' a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a 'follow' directive for links within such knols..."

Who is this proverbial "we"? Which authors are you granting this status? And by what criteria is the entry measured?

Last edited Oct 8, 2008 1:21 PM
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Addison Williams

What about Knol-linking?

What if I am an established writer, trusted and verified by Knol, and I choose to link to valuable content on another page within Knol? Is there a difference in the way internal links are treated for rankings, since each Knol article should be treated as an independent webpage (different from other websites, where the links can be navigational, etc.)?

Last edited Oct 8, 2008 9:51 AM
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