How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow?

How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow? I understand the purpose of no-follow is for webmasters to indicate which links are paid, but when sites like Wikipedia make EVERY outbound link no-follow, that defeats the purpose. John T, Denver

Russian subtitles translated by Mike Shakin.

[acidrazor]

@IgorHW The only question was "How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow?" and Matt answered that in 0:31 - 0:46 . The person who submitted the question then went ahead and gave wikipedia as an example of no-follow ALL links which defeats the purpose of PageRank, which Matt commented on and explained that they could take a different approach to not have to no-follow ALL links and in that way contribute more valuable relevant links and content so Google's Index can benefit

[acidrazor]

@ollie3030 He did, see my response to @IgorHW. There was no root question beyond "How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow?". Questions are normally defined by a question mark. The part after the question was just a comment. Something Matt answered as well by giving his opinion on what these sites should do.

[l.j.garner]

Question not answered. They did not ask what nofollow is. They did not ask what situations you may find follow vs nofollow.

[recordinghacks]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp No, he described what nofollow means, but did not say whether there are ramifications are for sites with this sort of policy. The question Matt answered was "how does Google treat LINKS that are nofollowed." Which is not nearly as interesting a question as the one the O.P. asked.

[acidrazor]

@IgorHW If that was the question, why didn't he ask that question? :) If Matt tried to interpret the question and got it wrong, you'd be in arms. He literally answered the question. And by omission and the way he talked about "all external links = nofollow", you can assume that Google does not penalize a site for doing that. He, in fact, states clearly that it's an effective way to get rid of people spamming your site with their links. To me the question was answered.

[IgorHW]

@AcidRaZor From 0:31 - 0:46 Matt only explained what is the purpose of nofolled links, question was more in terms "does google penalize websites that put nofollow on all external links".

[IgorHW]

Matt answered the question on his Buzz. I don't think that I can post link here in comments so you will have to find it for yourself :)

[dogbert]

Wikipedia editors copy content from my site. They reference my site, but the links are no-follow, and wikipedia now ranks higher for the same terms. Wikipedia is not punished. My site is. I'm sure Google cares more about how much I spend on adwords. It's not like they don't know which page is older.

[brianpurkiss]

Didn't answer the question. Didn't answer the question at all. He talked about the why of having dofollow or nofollow. He didn't answer how Google treats websites with all nofollow external links.


Normally Google Webmaster videos are great, and useful. This one? Not so much.

[VideoKursPL]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp It's not the answer for the question. The answer should explain how you would treat !WEBSITE! that has ONLY no-follow external links. You answered how are nofollowed links treated (and that almost everyone knows).

[kinfair]

@MrTVTL :D Its a watermelon theme fresh off the Google webmaster videos!

[ollie]

Hey Matt, You never answered the root question in your response.

[GetFoundOnlineTips]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp But, how does Google treat the sites that are linking out with no-follows? It is a little weird to have a site where all of the outbound links are no-follow. Besides that, no-follow is complety destroying the search engine optimization.

[DavidODonnell]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp Still haven't addressed the question, 'How does Google treat a website where all external links are no-follow?' Is there any potential penalty for a website that has all or a majority of it's external links no-followed? Thx

[GetFoundOnlineTips]

You do not gave the answer to the question!

[RemixPicture]

I'm still a bit confused. I know that nofollow links does not transfer any "link juice", but are they good to have in terms of search engine ranking? Because a lot of people say that nofollow are as good as dofollow in terms of ranking, and others say that they are not.

[DanS]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp Thats how Google treats the LINKS....the question was how does it treat the SITE. i.e is there any penalty?

[LaurentBourrelly]

@GoogleWebmasterHelp no need to do a video, in order to tell us "nofollow" doesn't pass PR or anchor.
The question was more subtile, and MC didn't address it.
If a site is "egocentric" in its links policy, does it impact the way Google look at it ?
Wikipedia is a bad exemple because Google obviously likes this site ... a lot !
Let's say if a "normal" site use "nofollow" everywhere, is it good, bad, whatever ?

[theshark]

Is this still true 9 years later, here in 2020? Or is this no longer relevant?

[Socialprseo]

What about introducing a web friendly tag like "midfollow" for bridging links between "nofollow" and "follow"? @matdwright