No problems with ‘nofollow’

The bit of text saying: “rel=’nofollow’” within the HTML of a link is more than just a decoration - it can have a big effect on a website’s page ranking with Google

Patricio Robles explains on the Econsultancy blog that webmasters need to master the “balancing act” of making sure a site links out but it also has links coming in.

However, it is important when linking out to websites that they don’t go to sites deemed “spammy” by Google, as this can provide a blow to search engine rankings.

This is where the ‘nofollow’ attribute comes in - it effectively says: “Here’s a link, you go there if you want, but I don’t know if you can trust it.”

“If you have user-generated content on your website, have your application automatically apply ‘nofollow’ to every link supplied by users in comments, profiles, blog posts, wikis, etc,” suggested Patricio.

“Doing so will not only protect your website from the ill-effects of content users might submit containing links to websites in bad neighbourhoods, it will also discourage spammers from targeting your website.”

This is because, with the ‘nofollow’ attribute in place, they will see no benefit from doing so.