It seems that not all links to ones website are equal, and, since external links from ones website can can affect your ranking I want to make sure that all the external links from my site (to sites which only give me a no follow link in return) only get a no follow link to them. This is particularly important for my site because I have dozens and dozens of external links from my site.
The thing is, I can`t find a no follow link highlighter which works with IE.
Does anyone know of one ?
Incidentally, am I right in my assumptions about no follow v do follow links ? ! ?

You're obsessed with SEO! There'll be more dedicated web and SEO forums that will be able to answer better than this forum I think :)

Being slightly bored this afternoon, I've created a nofollow highlighting bookmarklet, which while only tested in IE, should work in all browsers.

Details and link to save are here: http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/nofollow.htm

Being slightly bored this afternoon, I've created a nofollow highlighting bookmarklet, which while only tested in IE, should work in all browsers.

Details and link to save are here: http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/nofollow.htm

That is very impressive. :)

Maybe it is easier than it looks but I was impressed!

Being slightly bored this afternoon, I've created a nofollow highlighting bookmarklet, which while only tested in IE, should work in all browsers.

Details and link to save are here: http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/nofollow.htm

I realise I`m showing my ignorance of IT, I don`t actually know a huge amount about browsers and all that. Are bookmarks the same as "favourites", because right clicking only gives me the option to add to favourites. I must be doing something wrong here because if I left click on the link and try to drag to the 3rd line down from the top on my screen, but it doesn`t seem to work.
What is an idiots guide to getting this to work on my PC ?
Thanks !

I still can`t drag that link onto my bookmarks, I`ve managed to load something into my bookmarks using Google. But when I click on it it just exits the webpage I`m on and brings up the page I got from using the link you supplied (as opposed to highlighting the links).
Why is it doing that ?
It`s SOOOOO frustrating........

I`ve finally managed to get it working but only in the favourites section so far, I can`t get it to work as a bookmark or onto the links bar yet.

What has surprised me is that nearly all the external links from nearly every site I`ve checked so far, have do follow links, even the avatars on the few forums I contribute to. That really surprised me. In my brief research so far the only no follow external links I`ve found are in Wikipedia.
Is this about right ?
If so this no follow link thing affecting your ranking can`t be that important can it ?
Or not ?

I realise I`m showing my ignorance of IT, I don`t actually know a huge amount about browsers and all that. Are bookmarks the same as "favourites", because right clicking only gives me the option to add to favourites. I must be doing something wrong here because if I left click on the link and try to drag to the 3rd line down from the top on my screen, but it doesn`t seem to work.
What is an idiots guide to getting this to work on my PC ?
Thanks !

For some reason it doesn't drag on my Windows 7 machine running IE8, but does on my XP/IE8 machine... Anyway, bookmarks are the same as favourites, so selecting add as favourite will all it to your list of favourites and can be accessed in the same manner. You basically just select the item when you are on the page you want to look at.

Maybe it is easier than it looks but I was impressed!

Just using jQuery - the main bit of code is to make sure it's loaded into the page (which came from the website linked on that page), and then effectively running:
$('a[rel="nofollow"]').css('background','red');
(which selects all <a> tags with an attribute "rel" set to "nofollow", and sets the CSS attribute "background" to "red" on those selected tags).

Whatever you`ve done (and it`s all over my head......) it works great, and has also given me food for thought. Like SEO is even more of a Black Art than I already thought. In fact I`m not convinced how many people really know what`s needed, I know I don`t !

I know there's one for firefox. Maybe you should you use that instead?

rel can often contain multiple parameters but I doubt this is even implemented in Justin case.

For example: rel="external,nofollow"

I personally don't use jQuery but I do love the elegant of it.

If you use firefox instead of IE then Greasemonkey plug-in with the relevent script would solve this particular problem.

rel can often contain multiple parameters but I doubt this is even implemented in Justin case.

For example: rel="external,nofollow"

I personally don't use jQuery but I do love the elegant of it.

If you use firefox instead of IE then Greasemonkey plug-in with the relevent script would solve this particular problem.

Are you saying there`s some possibility that some of the links flagged as "do-follow" are in fact "no follow" ?

This is best left to dosxuk to answer as I am not not an expert in jQuery to know if rel="nofollow" means extact match or not. I have a strong feeling it means exact match.

If this is the case and you are using this tool to check other sites then yes, it quite possible that this script would give false output in some cases.

I've just checked, I should have put in "external nofollow" in my example above. It is seperated by spaces not commas.

You can always do a experiment by putting in rel="external nofollow" on your own site and see what it does.


Regarding nofollow vs follow:

"nofollow" attribute was invented by Google to combat link spamming in blog comments.

It means "I cannot vouch for this link" since I didn't create it. It does not mean "They don't give me any PR/keyword credit and so I won't give them PR/keyword credit back."

If you use nofollow in your link then the PR for that link simply disappears into thin air. It does NOT get redistributed to other links you have on that particular page.

Now, if everyone started treating "nofollow" as anything other than "I cannot vouch for this link" (or similar valid reasons) then google PR calculations would become useless rendering the nofollow as being a pointless attribute where the spammers would win.

Solution?

If you link out to any relevant site with a useful anchor text which are followed then you get a tiny share of any leaked out PR back as a reward for giving useful information not only to your users but to the search engines.

So, in effect, putting excessive nofollow in is making things worst for yourself as you will not get any of this reward back.

Rather than using nofollow, you are best:
Finding an alternative source to link to if for some reason you do not wish to credit a particular site some PR.
Or approach the site that nofollow you to change its status.
Or even remove the link altogether.

This is best left to dosxuk to answer as I am not not an expert in jQuery to know if rel="nofollow" means extact match or not. I have a strong feeling it means exact match.

If this is the case and you are using this tool to check other sites then yes, it quite possible that this script would give false output in some cases.

I've just checked, I should have put in "external nofollow" in my example above. It is seperated by spaces not commas.

You can always do a experiment by putting in rel="external nofollow" on your own site and see what it does.


Regarding nofollow vs follow:

"nofollow" attribute was invented by Google to combat link spamming in blog comments.

It means "I cannot vouch for this link" since I didn't create it. It does not mean "They don't give me any PR/keyword credit and so I won't give them PR/keyword credit back."

If you use nofollow in your link then the PR for that link simply disappears into thin air. It does NOT get redistributed to other links you have on that particular page.

Now, if everyone started treating "nofollow" as anything other than "I cannot vouch for this link" (or similar valid reasons) then google PR calculations would become useless rendering the nofollow as being a pointless attribute where the spammers would win.

Solution?

If you link out to any relevant site with a useful anchor text which are followed then you get a tiny share of any leaked out PR back as a reward for giving useful information not only to your users but to the search engines.

So, in effect, putting excessive nofollow in is making things worst for yourself as you will not get any of this reward back.

Rather than using nofollow, you are best:
Finding an alternative source to link to if for some reason you do not wish to credit a particular site some PR.
Or approach the site that nofollow you to change its status.
Or even remove the link altogether.


That all seems to make sense.
The problem is that a lot of what one reads SEOwise also seems to make sense, even two people saying the opposite things !

Best to follow matt cutts blog as he works for Google in combatting spam who often write worthwhile SEO snippet which makes it a far more accurate source for information.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

This particular page covers most of what I wrote above: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

OK, I've updated the script so that it will correctly highlight links which have the string "nofollow" anywhere in the rel attribute.

Edit: Just to add, you'll need to visit the page linked above and add it to your favourites again to get the updated version.

You could always use google chrome with mozbar installed to highlight no follows or "chromeSeo" or "seoforfirefox" these are all free no follow checkers all tried and tested.

I would second Andy's idea......Firefox is my browser of choice though it is getting slow!

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