Nofollow Dofollow What?
There is some confusion about the rel="nofollow" link attribute Google introduced some years ago.
Following that, the dofollow idea spread further confusion.
I'll try to remove some of the confusion in this article.
The rel="nofollow" Link Attribute
Google introduced the rel="nofollow" link attribute in 2005 in response to the proliferation of comment spam.
Blog comment links would be given the rel="nofollow" attribute so googlebot wouldn't crawl the pages being linked to. Well, unless the same page was linked to from somewhere else without rel="nofollow".
It didn't work. Not only did legitimate links get tagged with rel="nofollow", but comment spam is as persistent as it ever was.
Yet, rel="nofollow" is still with us, albeit with a change in purpose.
Currently, according to Google's Matt Cutts, the rel="nofollow" is a method to "tell search engines 'I can't or don't want to vouch for this link.'" Links with the rel="nofollow" attribute won't help sites rank higher in Google's search results.
With that information, it got crazy. It became, in essence, a
Some site owners proceeded to nofollow every link leading to other sites. The idea was to keep all page rank or to let the other sites look out for their own page rank. Over time, many site owners became very close-fisted with links to other sites.
In order to boost page rank of certain pages, some site owners used rel="nofollow" to link to their own, less important pages. The idea was that with only so much page rank to go around, don't drain it off with links to less important pages.
The state of the rel="nofollow" link attribute's perception today is pretty much a state of confusion. Not only has Google shifted it's purpose, and may do so again, but there is also inadequate information about which other search engines recognize rel="nofollow" and how they treat it.
Unless your situation warrants otherwise, it may be prudent to just skip rel="nofollow". Or, if you must use it, use it sparingly, perhaps only where unmoderated messages can be published, and never on friends' sites or sites you trust.
If a certain link simply must not be followed by search engines, the Linking Without an "A" Tag method may work for your situation.
Dofollow
"Dofollow" is a concept or a statement. It means links do not contain the rel="nofollow" link attribute.
There is no rel="dofollow" attribute, only the absence of rel="nofollow". (Well, one can insert a rel="dofollow" attribute into links, or any unrecognized attribute for that matter, it just won't make any difference in how the link is treated.)
At the point when most blogs were putting a rel="nofollow" attribute into their comment links, some blogs got an advantage in the competition for comments by declaring themselves a dofollow blog. In other words, a blog where links in comments did not contain rel="nofollow".
Commenting is encouraged at dofollow blogs because links can have SEO value for the commenter. (Blogs using the rel="nofollow" link attribute, on the other hand, discourage commenting because there is no SEO value for the commenter.)
Dedicated sites and pages of links were developed to list dofollow blogs.
A WordPress plugin was developed (called the Dofollow plugin) to get around the blogging software's automatic implementation of nofollow.
The idea of dofollow became confused with rel="nofollow", for some, because the rel="dofollow" opposite of rel="nofollow" seemed to make sense. In actuality, there is no rel="dofollow".
What?
rel="nofollow" is a link attribute. It tells search engine spiders that you can't or won't vouch for the link.
dofollow is not a link attribute. It is a statement indicating links are free of the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Much ado about nothing :-)
Will Bontrager
