What is a "dofollow" Tag?

by Kathy Foust

Essentially, a "dofollow" tag or at least the lack of a "nofollow" tag is what makes the difference between worthy and unworthy links on your site. For instance, when you comment on a blog, you leave your name and maybe your URL. If comments are tagged as "nofollow" in the template that you left the information at, then you may get visitors from your link on the site that you commented on, but Google won't recognize those backlinks in any manner that will increase your ranking.

The sites that have a "dofollow" tag can have an impact on your Google ranking. This makes bloggers very happy and we all jump for joy as our families look at us in confusion and fear.

Naturally, this is a method that can be easily manipulated as people buy links  from "dofollow" sites. Google doesn't like that. Basically, when a backlink comes from a "dofollow" site, the owner of that site is saying that they consider that link to be a quality link. A quality site would be a site that provides useful information. When it comes to link farms, they use a "dofollow" tag to get people to come back to their site, but they may not have any relevant content.

Google is trying to come up with a way to identify unworthy sites so that they can avoid giving them Google juice that isn't warranted. People that review sites for pay must reveal that they are being rewarded in some way to review those sites. Google is developing a way to track paid backlinks by using the disclosure that bloggers must now provide. So, if you're backlinking to a site, you might want to make sure it has relevant content before you put your own Google juice at risk.

By the way, this site is actually a "dofollow" site, so any links you leave here in the comments will show as a quality backlink from my site (hint hint).