The no-follow link is used to give directions to search engines in order to exclude hyperlinks influencing the ranking of search engines index. It helps in reducing the spam in the search engines results.

Google designed the idea of the no follow attribute value in 2005 to eliminate the spam that could come through in a search when using keywords in the search engines. The no follow link is not for blocking access to web content, only for preventing the content to be indexed by the search engines.

A links intended page rank will not be affected nor would its content be blocked by hyperlinks that include the rel=?nofollow? attribute. Though the no follow attribute was designed and copyrighted by Google, its value is being used by several others including, Bing, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search.

It does not mean that the search engines do not follow the links. They do follow, but they merely not index them in the database. The link can be clicked, and the page will be loaded without blocking any contents. This is just used to reduce the spam being displayed in the search result. In Google search, it is taken exactly. The link will not even be followed. There are some disagreements to this in the SEO report. According to the report, Google follows the link but does not index it. Yahoo will follow the link but do not include in the ranking calculations. MSN search neither counts it nor follows it. Every search engine creates has their own difference of what a no follow link should mean.

The majority of weblog software programs will automatically submit links with the no follow attribute and not give some options to change. There are a few programs that will allow alterations from trusted users and others will allow them to be submitted as the writer wishes and then use human editors to remove any unwanted links.

Using the no follow link, the unwanted contents can be avoided in the web. Most of the web owners have blogs or forum posting in order to increase the site ranking. Rankings can go down rapidly by an unpleasant or harmful post. The no follow link allows these posts but safeguards the webpage owner but excluding these posts to affect the ranking.

Google has began using the no follow links as a machine readable revelation for paid links and therefore keeping them from gaining any credibility in the search engines results. The web owners are still debating over whether or hurting them as many pages are paying for links to be traded on their site in hopes of raising their page rank. The no follow link has been contradicted many times over where SEO is concerned and it depends on the web owner as to if they allow them on the site or not.