Benefit in redirect links? And what about "nofollow"?

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Benefit in redirect links? And what about "nofollow"?

Many download sites use redirect links when linking to the publisher's site

Zookeeper

4:54 pm on Aug 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm an independent software vendor (ISV) and I submit many of my products to the many download sites on the web. I have two questions concerning the SEO benefit of links from download sites.

First, many download sites use redirect links when linking to the publisher's site, for example, <snip> using a PHP script.

Second, some download sites use the "nofollow" parameter in their links. <snip>

According to seroundtable.com/archives/006926.html:

Technically, rel="nofollow" does not mean the search engines won't spider the page. They will follow the link, spider the page and count the link as a backlink. What rel="nofollow" means is "don't trust the link", i.e. don't pass PageRank/TrustRank, etc.

But I've heard other sources say that a link with nofollow won't be counted by Google as an external link and therefore has no SEO benefit.

Thanks!

[edited by: caveman at 9:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specific examples. [/edit]

caveman

9:58 pm on Aug 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

Basically, redirect links won't pass PR unless they are 301's. It's also true that nofollow at the link level will not pass link authority.

Basically, those kinds of commercial links are there to allow users of Site A to get to products residing on Site B. Most of the time redirects like those you describe are part of a CMS, and/or are used for tracking purposes. SEO is rarely top-of-mind to the linking site in those cases.

If the linking site wants to credit Site B with a direct link also, they can choose to do that, and then the direct link will provide some SEO value to Site B.