Nofollow Social Networking Sites
October 2, 2010 Leave a Comment
Let me get up on my soapbox for a minute because I have a rant that I need to get out. Today, when I went onto a newer social networking site I wanted to check others websites who have portfolios. So I wrote a brief statement about how I am in the process of finishing up a portfolio website of my own and listed the link to it. Then I asked that others list their own websites. Easy enough, and all in the name of networking and find out what others use and to see what works.
Now I haven’t been on this website for several months. Since it is a relatively new website it has a growing user base, and oftentimes the discussion in the forums can stagnate. Dofollow links allow people to network by exchanging their website information while at the same time giving users incentive to post, so that they will get link juice to their website. However, when I went back to post at this social networking site I found that the links are now nofollow.
The choice of whether these links are nofollow or dofollow is up to the owner of the site, naturally. My beef is not with the site owners, it is with the people who created the rule for nofollow on the internet. Nofollow was initially created to reduce spam on blogs, like what you are reading right now. When social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and lesser known ones like the one I used today have their entire site as nofollow I think that starts to go against the nature of it.
If I create a Facebook fanpage of my photography and put a link to my photography then why shouldn’t I be rewarded with link juice? I think the system is starting to be abused now by web owners and site administrators because the Internet is built upon links and certain types of links are losing much of their value with the nofollow attribute applied to them.
Please don’t get me wrong. For blogs, and other websites I think the nofollow attribute provides a powerful source in order to control the links on one’s website. However, I think that social networking sites should not be allowed to use them. It goes against the networking part of them.
Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc have the power to change this, and I hope they do what is right and override the nofollow attribute on social networking sites.
