Google’s Matt Cutts: Nofollow Links Won’t Hurt You Unless You Are Spamming At A Huge Scale

In a video released today on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts said: typically, links that are nofollowed can’t hurt your rankings in Google. That being said, while most cases are that links that have the nofollow attribute on them will not negatively impact your rankings in Google. […]

Chat with SearchBot

google-links-featuredIn a video released today on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts said: typically, links that are nofollowed can’t hurt your rankings in Google.

That being said, while most cases are that links that have the nofollow attribute on them will not negatively impact your rankings in Google. Google did add that if you are mass spamming at a huge scale, Google may take manual action on your links to discourage your spamming, despite the links being nofollowed.

Why would Google take action on links that already are not trust by Google? It appears that some spammers don’t care and they need more of a knock to encourage them to stop link spamming.

Here is the video from Matt Cutts:

Related Stories:


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.