robots txt to prevent crawling of freesites

[Halfdeck]

I think halfdeck is referring to this:

<a href="http://www.nastyxvids.com/keyword/index.html" rel="nofollow">Keyword</a>

Yep.

I can think of a few other wembasters who stopped submitting to a few lists because of this. As a word of caution, just as a LL owner wouldn't want to recieve a nofollow in their link, I don't think a submitter would be too happy to get one either.

If I had a choice, I'd rather link to fewer sites and send more of my traffic to submitters who make quality sites and unique warning pages. IMO, doing so not only benefits both of us as far as SEO is concerned, but it also maintains a quality brand for my own LL.

As a submitter, I wouldn't like it either. I'm not advocating the idea; just pondering it. Not something I'd try with a new LL with just a handful of submitters.

However, LL aren't meant to be cheap directories, PageRank boosters, or reciprocal linking networks. LL is a source of traffic, plain and simple.

Slapping a nofollow on your category page links *may* result in higher SERP positions, because your incoming links from free sites are all one-way.

Technorati /tags/ pages are a good example imo of a site that seems to be gaining SERP positions thanks to massive one-way links (also doesn't hurt that many of these links are from reputable/authority/relevant sites):

52,309 posts currently tagged "seo" (assuming a high percentage of them pointing to technorati with rel="tag" links). Result?

http://www.google.com/search?q=seo&s...en-US:official

9th out of 11 million results.

If you look at the top of their page:

"http://www.technorati.com/tags/SEO"

you'll see:

<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow" />

(Not a scientific test).

John Battelle recently released an interview with Matt Cutts regarding wc3 deciding to use nofollow on all their $1000 links.

question:

W3C Schools is listing its supporters' websites on Page Rank 9 and PR7 pages in exchange for donations, $1000 a pop in cash or trade (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup). Speculation on this is buzzing because though W3C is a well respected educational resource many SEO blackhats endorse similar tactics. Does Google consider link selling a type of webspam against Google's TOS? And if so, should we expect to see some kind of a censure on W3C? Or how does it differ from what Google considers webspam?

You can read Matt Cutts' answer here:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002917.php