Two questions about nofollo

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>> CUTTS: Let's talk a little bit about nofollow. Here's a few questions we got. Vince Samios

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from the UK asks, "Do you feel that all the widespread and blanket use of nofollow tags

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is devaluing Google's search algorithms?" So, let me just interject before I finish

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the question. Even though SCOs may feel like nofollow is everywhere on the Web, if you

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look at the percentage of links that have nofollow, it's actually a pretty miniscule

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percentage. So, nofollows aren't that common on the Web compared to how the perception

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of them might be. So let me finish the question now. "Examples such as Wikipedia, where ALL

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external links are nofollow. Does Wikipedia mean nothing to Google's algorithms?" And

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then jonaths from Brighton, UK asks, "Do Google take into account quality factors from nofollowed

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links when the links come from well established authority websites, such as Wikipedia?" So,

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we're trusting, we're not taking into account the links from Wikipedia because they are

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nofollowed. So if you--don't bother to go spamming Wikipedia, it's not going to make

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any difference in search engine rankings if you get a link because that will be nofollowed.

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If you have a great resource and people find it via Wikipedia and it's just fantastic and

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people link to that because of that or you're getting traffic from a link in terms of direct

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surfers or visitors, then that might benefit your site but it's not going to get any search

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engine ranking boost just because Wikipedia links to you with those nofollow links. Now

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let me take a one slight detour and mention that if a particular site does have trust

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in the person who's making the link then there's plenty of good reasons to make that link flow

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page rank and take nofollow off. So for example, Wikipedia has experimented with all kinds

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of different ways to improve their process, you know, maybe anonymous edits have to be

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approved before they go live. So you could certainly imagine a scenario in which a Wikipedia

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editor who's very trusted, who had made a ton of edits without them ever being reverted,

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you know, that other editors vouched for, however, they wanted to define trust, those

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links might, for example take the nofollow off. So a very simple thing when you're being

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under attack from spammers is to add that nofollow tag and then it doesn't benefit the

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spammers anymore. But if you're on a blog or a forum or Wikipedia or whatever and you

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can come up with a good metric to say, "Okay, these are links that we do trust, that we

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do think are editorially given and are valuable for users," then there's plenty of good reasons

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to go ahead and say, "Okay, make those links flow page rank." But in general, nofollow

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links are a relatively small percentage of the Web and it does prevent a lot of sites

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from getting spammed. We don't use those links from Wikipedia currently but if Wikipedia

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wanted to put a more nuance policy in place, I would definitely support that.