Google’s Gary Illyes posted a Twitter poll yesterday asking if you would like the Google Search Console team to add a toggle or filter to the internal link report to show which links are nofollowed and not nofollowed.
So far the poll has over 1,000 votes and 80% of those who responded said they want the filter. I am not sure who would not want the filter, I mean, it is just more features to have access to.
Let’s say we could add in the Internal Links report in Search Console whether a link has “nofollow” or not.
Would you find that useful or not?(this is all hypothetical, I’m just testing the waters)
— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) June 19, 2019
This would not be for external links but only internal links. Gary Illyes said that Google will not even think about showing you which links are nofollowed because that would give link spammers way too many tools to cause damage. Here are those tweets:
We definitely don’t want to do this for external links. That would be advised by spammers in minutes.
— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) June 19, 2019
Yes. External links is a no no cos spammers would have a field day with it
— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) June 19, 2019
Here is some of the folks who voted no and why:
I said no. Why? Because there’s zero chance that Google only cares about whether a link is ‘follow’ or ‘nofollow’. If there’s a nofollow link in the content of an NYT article, I can bet it helps SEO. Where a ‘follow’ link in comments, won’t help–period.
— Brent D. Payne (@BrentDPayne) June 19, 2019
I am not sure I agree with that statement.
Forum discussion at Twitter.