Rel="nofollow", Yahoo & MSN

[jbgilbert]

Google started it and I thought that originally they got a buy-in from Yahoo & MSN on honoring this tag.... but now I wonder.

Does anybody know for sure if Yahoo and MSN actually honor this tag?

[seomike]

I would ask this, is Yahoo or MSN sofisticated enough to be able to even analyze the link, who its from where its going the content around etc the way Google does in order not to harm your page or the page the link is going to.

Cutts gave us that in lieu of BigDaddy as a soft warning of things to come since your outbound links now affect the crawl patterns of your site. So nofollow the off topic unrealated OBLs to keep the bots free rolling through your site will most likely building link pop to the sites you point to in the other engines.

[jbgilbert]

Nice note there SEOMike and some food for thought.....

But, I'd like to be a bit more specific on the questions and get your response.

This pertains to Yahoo & MSN only:
Would links to a page (from a site where the <a href...> tags uses the rel="nofollow") be considered beneficial backlinks and contribute to to rankings at Yahoo and MSN?

Was that clear?

[seomike]

lol, my bad, I was implying that there is not incentive for Yahoo and MSN to discount it since they can't weigh in like Google does on the links.

If they just did it to be like Google it could really skew their results since there is no logical reasoning behind it in the ranking algorithm.

Do they discount them, no. I don't see the effects. Should they? I don't think they should unless they can analyze the link as indepth as Google does.

[rustybrick]

Google started it...
Actually, I believe Yahoo started it. Google and MSN said they would follow the tag. Ask said they would not, because they do not need to.

[AnthonyCea]

Actually, I believe Yahoo started it. Google and MSN said they would follow the tag. Ask said they would not, because they do not need to.There is still a fight going on within the industry over the "no follow tag" issue!

http://www.forumpostersunion.com/showthread.php?t=201

There are a bunch of links in the above thread that explain it all, the first one is the original release from Google who got this started, Yahoo is now turning against it when they originally supported it!

[fathom]

lol, my bad, I was implying that there is not incentive for Yahoo and MSN to discount it since they can't weigh in like Google does on the links.

If they just did it to be like Google it could really skew their results since there is no logical reasoning behind it in the ranking algorithm.

Do they discount them, no. I don't see the effects. Should they? I don't think they should unless they can analyze the link as indepth as Google does.

Amazingly, you really don't want MSN & Yahoo to follow suite... as the Google nofollow levels the playing field for even ranking across engines... or rather to not use the same attribute style.

[Narendra]

I had posted one html email to yahoo account and come across the foloowing problem.

Yahoo removes the name attribute of the anchor tag and inserts rel="no follow" by itself

As a result my hotlinks are not working and traversing within the email becomes difficult.

Is there any possible solution to this problem.