rel="no-follow" for paid advertisers

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rel="no-follow" for paid advertisers

What is the deal?

honestman

7:35 pm on Mar 4, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have asked on a few occasions the appropriate manner to treat external advertising on a website, but have not found a satisfactory answer.

On the Google site, you are encouraged to report "paid links," which I assume could include normal advertising, using the "no-follow" attribute, but many claim that this is essentially ignored via their algorithm and is really only subject to manual review.

I try to be above-board and report all paid advertising. Is it worth the time and is there a possible penalty in having many nofollows due to having many legit ads? And if an external site link is paid for on one area of the site, should it be nofollowed in other areas when it is part of normal existing content and recommendations?

I am not talking about site sculpting or the like--which I do not agree with--just conformity with the rules regarding using nofollow for ads (some call them paid links, but not all advertising is a paid link--in fact this in the case on many sites).

Thank you.

honestman

5:15 pm on Mar 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

Is this question utterly moot and is the warning/notification on the Google site dated in this regard?

bwnbwn

5:40 pm on Mar 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

On the Google site, you are encouraged to report "paid links," which I assume could include normal advertising,

Paid links are just that links to other sites for the sole purpose of SEO value using desired anchor text to push them up in the serps.

Normal advertising is another animal and should be worked as such. Advertisers are paying for.
1- Traffic that converts to sales and not for SEO purposes. There is a difference between paid "links" and paid advertisers.

Some suggest to no follow to stop the PR bleeding but this is up to you.

We link out to many paid advertiser pages but use a no follow due to the link out is going to an application page and has no reason to be added to the serps.

If your linking directly from your site to the paid advertiser I would no follow them just to control the bleeding.

honestman

5:58 pm on Mar 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thank you for the response @bwnbwn. I was aware of the difference between paid links and normal advertising but did not know how Google could know this definitely either via its algorithm or manually, so I prefer to err on the side of caution and use nofollow. I had heard mention by many that "nofollow" was no longer a way to control the "bleeding" (which I have never noticed on a huge site), so that was/is not my motive.

Thanks again.

ken_b

6:11 pm on Mar 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

What has this got to do with AdSense?

You might have gotten more response if you psted this in the Google News forum.

That said, in my opinion, unless you are linking out to a whole bunch of advertisers from a single page the "bleed" isn't worth worrying about.

But then, Google is apparently purposely vague enough about this stuff to create as much confusion as possible.

Therefore, it is more or less a matter of doing whatever you choose, and hoping for the best.

There simply is no "right answer".

honestman

6:48 pm on Mar 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

@ken_b. Your point is well-taken about inadvertently posting in this section and I apologize as there was no response to this question in other forums--due perhaps due to the vagueness of the guidelines you refer to. I was, in the back of my mind, also concerned that pages with such ads in which there are also Adsense ads would be under greater scrutiny, as they are potentially competing even if in a different format.