Google nofollow's itself
Awesome. Nofollow-insane at its best. Check the source of Google's Webmaster Blog. In HEAD you'll find an insane meta tag:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" />
Well, that's one of many examples. Read the support forums. Another case of Google nofollow'ing herself:
Matt thought that all teams understood the syntax and semantics of rel-nofollow. It seems to me that's not the case. I really can't blame Googlers applying rel-nofollow or even nofollow/noindex meta tags to everything they get a hand on. It is not understandable. It's not useable. It's misleading. It's confusing. It should get buried asap.
Hat tip to John (JLH's post).
Update 1: A friendly Googler just told me that a Blogger glitch (pertaining only Google blogs) inserted the crawler-unfriendly meta element, it should be solved soon. I thought this bug was fixed months ago
Update 2: The 'noindex,nofollow' robots meta tag is gone now, and the Webmaster Central Blog got a neat new logo:
(I'd add ALT and TITLE text:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" />
Well, that's one of many examples. Read the support forums. Another case of Google nofollow'ing herself:
Matt thought that all teams understood the syntax and semantics of rel-nofollow. It seems to me that's not the case. I really can't blame Googlers applying rel-nofollow or even nofollow/noindex meta tags to everything they get a hand on. It is not understandable. It's not useable. It's misleading. It's confusing. It should get buried asap.
Hat tip to John (JLH's post).
Update 1: A friendly Googler just told me that a Blogger glitch (pertaining only Google blogs) inserted the crawler-unfriendly meta element, it should be solved soon. I thought this bug was fixed months ago
... if page.isPrivate == true by mistake then insert "<meta content='NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW' name='ROBOTS' />" ... (made up)Update 2: The 'noindex,nofollow' robots meta tag is gone now, and the Webmaster Central Blog got a neat new logo:
(I'd add ALT and TITLE text: alt="Google Webmaster Central Blog - Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index" title="Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index")Labels: fun, Google, microformats, nofollow, robots meta tags, SEO, Webmaster Central
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posted by Sebastian @ Monday, June 04, 2007 · PERMANENT LINK
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2 Comments:
At Monday, June 04, 2007,
JLH said…
I love the schizophrenic application of nofollow they use on the page you showed.
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/about
The link in the paragraph is nofollowed, but one line down I guess it's okay to have a normal link. It looks more amateurish than most of the stuff that comes in the groups looking for help.
At Friday, June 08, 2007,
Sebastian said…
Yep, there are many other examples of rel-nofollow misuse/abuse at Google.
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