Linkscape, the link data analysis tool from SEOmoz, has rolled out an update to its index. The company has shared some data and statistics from it, and that includes some interesting stats on nofollow use.
First, if you are unfamiliar with Linkscape, watch this WebProNews interview with SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin from when it was first announced. This will give you an idea of what Linkscape is all about.
Matt Cutts says his pinging of Twitter cofounder Evan Williams about nofollowing Twitter bio links was more of a heads-up than an imperative straight from the Googleplex.
Amazingly enough, the nofollow attribute doesn't spur a berserker rage in every webmaster. Quite a few can live with such links pointing to their sites.
Matt Cutts told Mike McDonald of WebProNews about something new from Google: the search advertising company opened a little help center on the topic of nofollows and links.
Pick a number between 6 and 950 and you'll likely find evidence, or at least the antecedent number, for a Google ranking penalty. Webmasters and SEOers are in general agreement Google penalizes, and have dubbed them according to their numeric reprimand: -6, -30, -60, -950, and so on. Google inadvertently in cases has acknowledged such penalties exist, but has yet to present any hard and fast rules.
Here's an interesting question put forth by webmasters: What's a link in StumbleUpon worth? Well, it's nofollowed, which means not much in terms of link juice. But there may be an indirect value. Part of that, of course, is branding. It's good to be found in as many places as possible. But another value, as noted at SearchEngineRoundtable, is the chance that somebody stumbles upon your site and blogs about it. If so, you've just earned another endorsement and possibly a good link.
Love 'em or hate 'em, you can expect to see fewer links throughout Flickr. The photo-sharing site recently added nofollow tags to most external links, making them pointless as part of an SEO strategy.