UseBB Community

Uhm... first of all I can't find where rel="nofollow" is used, (links produced by the BB-code doesn't contain that!) but anyway, I guess it's just me.

Is the usage of rel="nofollow" appropriate on web forums?

Google developed it with marketing and paid links in mind, as they wanted the search results to be "clean", targeted, and of course not affected by money (through paid links).

In a web forum, there are ongoing discussions. And most outbound links, are expected to be on-topic, thus helping Google and the other SEs to index the web better.

I'd like to know your opinion regarding this matter, why UseBB 1 used this attribute, etc.

Spyros R.

As far as I know, only Google uses the rel="nofollow".

I must say, the nofollow on a link is different then when stated as a meta-tag.

Google has it's PageRank system, and that's why the nofollow has been created. If people in forumposts add links, that doesn't mean the webmaster vouched for these links. Since each link (incomming and outgoing) is weigth for pagerank. This means when linking to the 'bad places' on the net, like linkfarms, your PR can decrease. Or you'll increase the PR on the page linked.

To prevent these negative outcome of wellment links, Google introdused the nofollow. Google does follow the links for indexing. The only thing Google doesn't do with links with this attribute is it won't be used in the PR system.

On big boards I can understand why they do this on posts by non-staff, since it can do damage on PR.

I've seen sites grow in PR, only because people were very active, and had links in their signatures. Linking to bad sites like this, can be a pain for sites when people but bad links in them.

In the future (2.0) it should be made possible to enable the attribute per forum or user level.