Am I Crazy to Leak All PageRank Juice?
- Image by rustybrick via Flickr
There is a strong belief, and it must be true as well. Google calculates number and quality of backlinks to your blog or post to award a PR Number. I think, it’s unnecessary to repeat that you should increase backlink and retain your PR Juice from leaking so as to improve in PageRank. In this context, there arises the concept of Nofollow and Dofollow. There are contradictory views. Most of us believe that Dofollow will leak your PR Juice causing negative effect to your PageRank. There are some bloggers who oppose the concept. Some of us have turned into Nofollow again due to the flood of spam comments.
I’m Running a Test
Let me announce this and share with you all. I have converted all of the links on comments into Dofollow. This way I will be leaking as much as possible PR Juice. On the next Google PR Update I will be losing most of the PageRank and reflect in reduced PR. Currently, this blog is Google PR 4 from the April Update. We’ll draw the result on coming update. I won’t be allowing spam comments though. I will be moderating comments manually and disapprove spams like “Nice Post”. Similarly comments with lots of links will be deleted. Only good comments with considerable length are to be approved and published. Don’t forget, I have right to expect quality comments as I have rewarded you with as much juice you can lick.
Am I Crazy?
You might question why am I doing this? Yes, I am crazy, if you think that way. But let me measure it up what will be the difference. Is this dofollow, that hamper the PR in real?
Come reap me off!
You are cordially invited to drain my PR Juice away. Post your comments and links. Your comments will be enriching my content and my PR Juice will be increasing your PageRank, fair deal, isn’t it? You all are welcome!
Please Answer Before You Leave
Happy blogging!
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.Update:
After running dofollow links on my blog I lost PR 1 but still I am not sure if it is due to dofollow or there might be many other factors that caused the PR reduced by one. Now the PR is 3.
And now, because I've changed the niche and purpose of this blog to totally different, there remains no use of dofollow or nofollow. I'm started to flow on default setting of links.
But as I read lots of literature during this period, I started to feel that its bit unethical to mark links dofollow delibrately. In fact the dofollow and nofollow attributes were devised so that author could decide which of the links worth following and which are not. Turning everything dofollow or nofollow is just ignoring the responsibility the search engines expects from a good webmaster. I started to believe that it is good to mark a link dofollow only if it deserves. A webmaster can't just leave it to everybody's play thing.
Happy blogging!
46 Responses to “Am I Crazy to Leak All PageRank Juice?”
icttrends on May 11, 2010
Invitation: I am running a test on dofollow for comments until next PR update. Come and drain my PR Juice http://icttrends.com/am-i-crazy-to-leak-...
omgzam on May 11, 2010
@icttrends Hey, may I ask how do you determine whether a blog is a dofollow or not? Cause I’m not sure whether mine is.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 11, 2010
Just look at the code if there is rel=”nofollow” inside the tag it is nofollow otherwise it is dofollow. You can find some extensions for firefox that will mark the nofollow or dofollow links with color.
Katelyn on June 7, 2011
I heard somewhere that you can only get PR juice from the exact page not the domain PR, for example: your main page is PR4 doesn’t mean this page also PR4, so the dofollow on this page is just like another usual backlink, not really a PR4 backlink, but I’m not sure.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on June 7, 2011
Its true that every page has its own PageRanks but for SERP it matters on which domain the page URL is. If the domain is well reputed and with higher PageRank, the pages different pages have good ranking in SERP.
Kevin M.
Twitter: KevinMartineau
on May 11, 2010
I am curious to see how your test turns out Suresh! I can’t see how it is going to be negative though.
.-= Kevin M.´s last blog ..3 ways to experience joy in our lives =-.
Houdini@BBQ Grill Thermometer on May 11, 2010
Please update me as to the results of your test. I am extremely interested in how it turns out. I use searchstatus to help me better understand each site that I visit. One of the options is to highlight no-follow links. It also can give you a link breakdown as well as PR, etc. It is free for firefox users. I only mention it because the previous comment was wondering about no-follow links. There is also a plugin for wordpress that will make your blog do-follow. Again, please keep us all informed as to the results and thanks for the juice! Best, Houdini
Colleen
Twitter: colleenlane
on May 12, 2010
We tend to link out liberally. Often times, a single blog entry of ours will link out to Flickr, Google Maps, and an authority site. I think Google weighs the activity on the blog, and who you are linking out to, more than the PR that is ‘lost.’
.-= Colleen´s last blog ..West Pasco Washington Homes For Sale =-.
Baba on May 12, 2010
Suresh
Your pagerank shouldn’t decrease for passing linkjuice through comments. PR is mainly determined by the links pointing to your site. Though it may sound wired to some folks PR won’t decrease by having more OBL. (Outbound Link). It is fact.
Some people think that NO. Of OBL will determine their PR but its not true at all. Only the number of Incomming Links will determine your PR. Folks are requested to check OBL of popular sites like bbc.co.uk , CNN.Com etc. They have 100s of OBL and dofollow.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 12, 2010
The points you have raised here worth considering. The most popular sites do have tons of outbound link, but my friend, are they dofollow OBL? If there is no role of do follow outbound links, why would there exist nofollow?
Shirley Osei-Mensah
Twitter: shirleyszone
on May 12, 2010
Really interesting test, Suresh. I think my blog is a nofollow one but I haven’t really gone into finding out if it really is or not but I once saw the nofollow tag in my blog’s code somewhere so I guess it is.
I think that making your blog a dofollow also helps you get many commenters apart from the spammy ones.
Have a nice day
.
.-= Shirley Osei-Mensah´s last blog ..Accepting Guest Posts On Shirley Osei-Mensah’s Blog =-.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 12, 2010
Thank you Shirley for your words. I hope the increased interraction worth more than being snob of PR. We’ll see after around three months if it really reduces PR too?
Brian Kirby on May 12, 2010
Will be very interesting to see how this turns out as it is something I have though about recently. I think you will lose some of your pr (next update about 3 months away I think) but you could get more traffic to your site as it might not affect where you appear in SERPs and you will probably get tonnes of traffic of people trying to take advantage of your dofollow links. I will follow with interest none the less.
Brian
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 12, 2010
Thank you Brian for you views. I’m glad to lose some PR in return to more traffic and more comments. Let’s see by how much it will get decreased though. I will always be welcoming comments and always happy to share the PR Juice.
Baba Pandey on May 12, 2010
Suresh, for sure i am talking about dofollow OBL. Check the popular sites. You can use SEO Quake Plugin (Mozilla) which will show you detailed link report of page.
.-= Baba Pandey´s last blog ..Negative Ranking factors =-.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 12, 2010
So, you believe I won’t lose any PageRank value. It would be great then. I’m going to have huge traffic, lots of comments and no loss in PR. I wonder how they have made their blog nofollow.
Anyway lets wait for conclusion till Google updates PageRank. We’ll have the proof then.
Baba Pandey on May 12, 2010
Suresh, the reason why people make nofollow is to pass PR juice to their pages. If you had made this site nofollow then PR juice would have passed to your sites inner pages and posts. When you make dofollow PR will be passed to others.
.-= Baba Pandey´s last blog ..Negative Ranking factors =-.
Sourish
Twitter: http://www.xpressmusic.org
on May 12, 2010
well i will be waiting to see the results you get in the next PR update . Having comments and user engagement is good
.-= Sourish´s last blog ..Google Buzz Extension Addons for Firefox and Chrome =-.
Tia
Twitter: bizchickblogs
on May 12, 2010
Good luck. You will probably get tons of spam, but I do not think you’ll see a decrease in page rank. It’s good to be dofollow. More blogs should be! Cheers, Tia
.-= Tia´s last blog ..Common Sense Blogging: BizChickBlogs’ Guide to New Post Ideas (5 Ways) =-.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 13, 2010
Thanks Tia for your views. I hope Akismet will work fine for spams and I have made auto-approve OFF. If it were only for spams, I don’t see any point in making NOFOLLOW.
Keith on May 12, 2010
I have also recently made my comments dofollow – I don’t believe that it will reduce the Page Rank, there’s just a risk of a lot of spam comments…
We will know soon enough, I’m guessing the next update will be the first weekend of July!
.-= Keith´s last blog ..Finding The Greatest Worth Out of Paid Links =-.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 13, 2010
Yes Keith, I noticed your blog allowed dofollow links. We can draw conclusion very soon.
Baba Pandey on May 21, 2010
I am surprised why you are passing juice to footer links set default by theme. Your footer has Aquom designed by File Search In conjunction with Articles , News , Search containing 4 links.
Please remove those links. If the footer coding is encrypted then you can replace it by HTML code. It is not a big deal.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on May 21, 2010
I’m not worried about passing link juice to anybody be it comment authors or the links in my posts or the footer credits till the PageRank update by Google. As you know Baba, I’m in a test. I want to see how much will the ‘Dofollow’ outbound links affect in PR (increment or decrement whatever).
I feel it necessary to pass the link juice to anybody who write good comments that contribute the post. This is the way to thank the comment authors. Dofollow for those 4 links is another BIG Thanks to the theme creaters whose hard work I’m using without paying them.
We’ll see the outcome in coming PR Update by Google. Then, we’ll discuss again, with the conclusion what would be better for future!
Rob
Twitter: nzcreativeweb
on June 3, 2010
As a person who also is involved in this industry, I am very greatful for the great info you have put up on here. As you may know, web design and development is ever-changing, and to keep up with the pace of that growth we have to keep learning and experimenting, and your info has given me some great ideas and advice. Looking forward to more of your ideas…
Sam @ webcam jobs
Twitter: BecomePerformer
on June 25, 2010
Thanks for the information. I’ve only recently learned about the whole “dofollow” and “nofollow” links. But from what I’ve learned, Page Rank is determined by links coming into your site, not linking going out, right? Not sure how allowing dofollow posts in your blog would affect page rank. Then again, it seems like I’m learning new things every day.
I’ve saved this page to my favorites as I’ll be checking back for the results.
Peter Leigh on June 25, 2010
Great test – I’m very keen on finding out what the result is.
You said that your PR started at 4 in April, my SEO tool is telling me that your index page is now down to 3… Obviously other factors could affect this, but if it’s simply down to this experiment, then that’s quite a quick down shift by Google!
Personally I think it does have an affect, simply to stop people buying domains and linking like mad to the site they want to promote. You don’t see a lot of external follow links on the big boy sites do you?
How long are you going to run the test for and when’s your next update going to be may I ask?
Here’s a link to drain your juice!
Guarantor Loans Online
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on June 26, 2010
Yes the PR has dropped down to 3 from 4. But still, I can not conclude its because of dofollow.
Test still continues till next update.
Kimberly Castleberry on July 3, 2010
From the old “horde the juice” mindset there would have been a lot of naysayers regarding the “leaking” of all this juice.
However, at this point, we have plenty of bloggers such as Sire over at wassup.com blog that have over and over again disproven this at least in their own tests.
That said though there’s a lot of factors that go into making a successful, revenue generating site besides just page rank. Even google now downplays the significance of page rank by removing it from webtools.
I look forward to your future results!
Kimberly
PS: You followed my intensedebate link off of Nile Flore’s blog and I saw you listed and came over here. You have a really nice site, I’ll definitely be back!
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on July 4, 2010
Thanks Kim for stopping by and the views you’ve pointed out. Let’s wait till the next PR update.
Flore’s blog is one of my favourite blogs.
Mark Thompson on July 21, 2010
I've been following this for a while and notice you've still got a PR 3. I think you need some more links on here!
One question I have is that although the domain has a PR 3, this page has no rank in itself. Therefore, won't any links from this page leave the rank of the domain intact anyway?
Blacklistedloans.com
Frank on August 7, 2010
Hi Suresh,
How about your blog links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Sociable and others through plugins?
Are they all dofollow on your blog?
I am planning to use flickr photo's but am wondering if that would have a big effect on my pagerank.
Any idea?
Regards
Frank
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on August 8, 2010
Most of the plugins like facebook, twitter etc uses javascript to display their content on your page and as we all know javascripts are not visible to search engine crawlers, it does not matter whether your blog is dofollow or nofollow. It won’t cause effect on any sense. So, there’s no problem to use them.
Post Articles on September 11, 2010
See, by making your blog dofollow, you are inviting people to share their views and from their views you know what you should do and what not to do!
One thing more is you are getting dynamic content on your website that is original content!
If we talk about link juice or leak of link juice then you are not going to loose much if your site has less than 50 OBL!
Indra Hasbi on September 16, 2010
I have do follow blog Mogek. When i set dofollow, PR decrease but alexa rank increase. The other benefit, google crawl active, because it reach content from comment.
George Thistle on October 4, 2010
When's the next update? PR has been at 3 for a while now!
Joseph Condron on November 15, 2010
Very interesting experiment. Has your pagerank changed in the interim?
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on November 16, 2010
I should say NO though its PR 3 from PR4 because it is not the ‘dofollo’ that lowered my PR, there are other factors I can understand.
Geroge Thistle on November 19, 2010
Do you think that by having nofollow on a blog that it encourages the content to be better? So what I mean is on a blog without no follow links, would you expect the amount of spam to increase substantially?
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on November 20, 2010
Amount of spams will increase if your blog offers link juice, its pretty natural. But spam problem is not that hard these days. Just install G.A.S.P. on your blog as I have done here. It will just put a javascript check box that can’t be seen by bots. It will be only human to spam your blog that you can very easily filter out.
Amr Boghdady on November 28, 2010
No, you're perfectly fine, don't worry
Allowing doFollow links in your comment area is a technique really many bloggers use to give an incentive for other people to read their blog post and comment on it, thus increasing activity on their blog
Yes, you'll get many spammers along the way, but its a trade-off here, do some little extra work deleting spammers' posts + losing some of your PR VS getting more activity on your blog
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on November 30, 2010
Thank you Amr, and the good thing is that spammer stopped to tease as I installed G.A.S.P. Now only human write comments in my posts and I hope human are less spammers than those bots
raymund@Okidata toners
Twitter: rfcamat
on March 23, 2011
So would you confirm that making comments do-follow will lower your site’s page rank. Your response can be of help to me because I am still undecided whether to make my blog do-follow or no-follow.
Suresh Khanal
Twitter: icttrends
on March 25, 2011
It won’t matter much as the comments are allowed only on the post pages and ranking is considered for home page. But yes, lots of outgoing dofollow links affects a bit.
talwinder on April 21, 2011
1)>>I think u should say TrustRank instead of PR.Nowadays google considers trust rank of a site more than PR .PageRank is a pretty mirage to keep you from thinking about the real measure of a site’s popularity, better known as TrustRank.
TrustRank is the degree to which Google trusts that your website will be valuable to visitors if presented as a search result. It is earned in the same way that PageRank is: by receiving links from other sites. The age of a site also increases its TrustRank.
Most blogs mark all comments with a nofollow tag, which, as you may recall, blocks the passing of TrustRank, but Google very likely de-emphasizes comment links anyway because the system has been so abused….
So i think this technique of linkbuilding via commenting works very less these days due to changed algorithms of google search engine…and im sure Dofollow will not leak your PR .
jorjettecelestine
Twitter: #!/Nature_Lifestyl
on May 11, 2011
You’re not crazy, you just mime
The likns are nofollow as far as I can see..
Lately I understood that there’s no big difference between dofollow and nofollow, both are important.