Should I be using nofollow links in reference website?

Question

So I made a guide on the steps to follow when making a website a while ago, which is pretty much a page with loads of references of where to do/get certain things. I'm only now reading up on things like nofollow links, and I'm not sure if they're applicable.

All of the links are related to web development, so relevant to the website itself.

There's a section with examples of good websites, which aren't as applicable. Should I be using nofollow links for this section, or for all of the links on this website? I'm not really sure what I should be doing in this situation.

I mention this now as a webmaster for one of these websites actually approached me saying they were penalised by Google due to invalid links through to their site. Is that due to me? Or unrelated?

Answer 1

I mention this now as a webmaster for one of these websites actually approached me saying they were penalised by Google due to invalid links through to their site.

First off, that webmaster will have no evidence to show that it was because of you linking to their site. Good links are a good thing for everyone. If you aren't creating spammy links everywhere, there is nothing to worry about.

Secondly, that webmaster can go an disavow any links to their site that they wish through Google.

Should I be using nofollow links in reference website?

No. Absolutely not. You have a perfectly legitimate site and you are linking to perfectly legitimate other sites. Don't bother with any of this and let the links be.

Here's what Google says about it:

Here are some cases in which you might want to consider using nofollow:

• Untrusted content: If you can't or don't want to vouch for the content of pages you link to from your site — for example, untrusted user comments or guestbook entries — you should nofollow those links. This can discourage spammers from targeting your site, and will help keep your site from inadvertently passing PageRank to bad neighborhoods on the web. In particular, comment spammers may decide not to target a specific content management system or blog service if they can see that untrusted links in that service are nofollowed. If you want to recognize and reward trustworthy contributors, you could decide to automatically or manually remove the nofollow attribute on links posted by members or users who have consistently made high-quality contributions over time.

• Paid links: A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word "Advertisement"). More information on Google's stance on paid links.

• Crawl prioritization: Search engine robots can't sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there's no reason to invite Googlebot to follow "register here" or "sign in" links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you'd prefer to see in Google's index. However, a solid information architecture — intuitive navigation, user- and search-engine-friendly URLs, and so on — is likely to be a far more productive use of resources than focusing on crawl prioritization via nofollowed links.