rel="nofollow"

In early 2005, Google, Yahoo, and MSN collaborated in creating an extension to the HTML standard for the purpose of reducing comment spam.

The extension was the introduction of the rel="nofollow" attribute for HTML links.

The purpose of the rel="nofollow" attribute is to create HTML links which can be viewed and clicked by normal web users, but which will not be counted as a link by the search engines.

This is to enable web logs and web forums to allow users to post links in messages and signatures -- without encouraging link spammers to abuse that system.

A normal HTML link looks like this:

<a href="/">alt.internet.search-engines FAQ</a>

A link with the rel="nofollow" attribute looks like this:

<a href="/" rel="nofollow">alt.internet.search-engines FAQ</a>

rel="nofollow" Alternatives

Before Google, Yahoo, and MSN introduced the rel="nofollow" attribute, webmasters were achieving similar results using JavaScript links and PHP scripted links.