They should still include nofollow on links that don't really have a reason for being followed.I think they should ship it with a robots.txt as default... instead of isolating what should or shouldn't be indexed in the files themselves.
Maybe the option vs. actual implementation. SE's don't respect nofollow like people think, and even Google state this themselves. Google state that will review the nofollow attribute, but overall they decide whether to follow it or not. Google DO respect the robots.txt as it is the legal method on how they respect privacy laws for people who do not want their pages indexed. These laws have zero to do with nofollow though, and they only state they MAY respect your wish, otherwise they pretty much WILL make up their own mind.They should still include nofollow on links that don't really have a reason for being followed.
Why should profiles not be indexed or followed?I don't see in the code the "nofollow" attribute in the links to profiles, members area, and other "non pertinent" pages. It's easy to do this changes with the nofollow or the robots.txt, but why don't do it to default?
Why should profiles not be indexed or followed?
The only thing I would use nofollow for is for pages that need to stay private and/or can't be accessed by guests anyway.
Nofollow does not make a profile private. User privacy setting does.Privacy, in UE there are a law (i link) for that...the profiles should be private, and viewable only for others members.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569 said:In general, we don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449 said:A robots.txt file restricts access to your site by search engine robots that crawl the web. These bots are automated, and before they access pages of a site, they check to see if a robots.txt file exists that prevents them from accessing certain pages. (All respectable robots will respect the directives in a robots.txt file, although some may interpret them differently. However, a robots.txt is not enforceable, and some spammers and other troublemakers may ignore it. For this reason, we recommend password protecting confidential information.)
You need a robots.txt file only if your site includes content that you don't want search engines to index. If you want search engines to index everything in your site, you don't need a robots.txt file (not even an empty one).
Sorry, but I fail to see how. Let's take your profile here on xenforo.com for example (paraphrasing here):They are a rich source of content.
Google would not dismiss profile pages as useless or irrelevant content IF the profile page allows unique content and discussions to be posted... which most forum software does nowadays. Useless page are duplicate content shown a different way, advanced posting / interface pages for interacting with the software, that does not produce something unique and individual.Sorry, but I fail to see how. Let's take your profile here on xenforo.com for example (paraphrasing here):
People are just completely confused about nofollow IMHO, so here it is straight from Google, who lets face it, are the only ones we care about for anything SE related:
See the key differences? Nofollow means nothing other than a directive a search engine may or may not follow / listen too, and it doesn't keep pages out of the index. A robots file MUST be respected by search engines, not spammers obviously, and WILL keep your pages out of the search engines, whether linked to or not. SE's must obey a robots.txt... they don't have to obey a nofollow.
Sorry, but I fail to see how. Let's take your profile here on xenforo.com for example (paraphrasing here):
"keep up the good work"
"how do i buy this software?"
"great job, this is what vb4 was supposed to look like then!"
"you're perfect"
"were you in <town> today?"
I don't see how these are good content, while I agree that the other tabs have some good content, the "Profile Posts" tab doesnt generally have stuff you want in the SE's.
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