no follow - when and how?
 

I have seen a few mentions of using "no follow"; what exactly does it do and when should it be used? Also how do you use it? (I mean the code)

Basically, whack this into your link tag -

rel="nofollow"

so like Wibble or whatever.

It stops spiders from following the link, basically the more links out of have, the more leaks you have, using this plugs up leaks, I would recommend only adding it to affiliate links as that is one way traffic - it would be really wankerish to do it on link exchanges etc.

rel="nofollow">I Sold This Link Spot

It's a way of telling the SEs about your relation to the site/page you are linking to. In my minor experience, it seems most often used to not leak PR to a sponsor or hosted gallery. Of course, if you nofollow all of your sponsor links, you are probably less likely to have the luck of getting hosted galleries with your affiliate ID cached by Google. (Not certain about that part.) Sites that sell advertising blocks usually nofollow the links in those sold ads.

I *think* they still follow the link and cache the page, but your page won't be considered a backlink to it and you lose none of your page's PR juice to them. I think...

Sorry, actually you are right.

Nofollow = nothing. A link with nofollow is totally useless in SE.

Isn't that the point?

I have been needing to get on the blower to china for a while - Cheers!

rel="nofollow" actually tells to almost all search engine ‘don't value/score this link’ rather than ‘don't follow this link’ ... For G it means what UW said: it is used to not leak PR though link still can be 'followed' and crawled but it will not get any points from Your page.

in a layman's language, a no follow tag in the HTML stops search engine spider to crawl into that link!

No, as has been explained... whether in "a layman's language" or any other tongue, the nofollow *attribute* added to a link/anchor *tag* is simply a piece of information which the crawling spiders, and the search engines for which they work, add to their data about the site being crawled and the link which contains the nofollow attribute. At the moment the data is being used by Google to control/tweak PR leaking, though what they actually choose to do with that data could change at any time, but it definitely does not prevent spiders from actually following those links.


.