NoDoFollow for Chrome, Firefox, Other Browsers Without Plugin!

Simply drag the "NoDoFollow?" link above to the bookmark strip on your browser.

Note that you'll have to click it each time you view a page; unlike the old NoDoFollow Firefox plugin, it doesn't "stick."

Another possibility is to search the web for the so-called "NoDoFollow 1.5", which claims to have updated zacharycox's old NoDoFollow plugin to work with Firefox 4,5,6 and 7, but I have no idea if that site is legit or (probably not, but you never know) malware. The comments do not report any success with it, so I'm leery of it.

There's also a NoDoFollow for Chrome Extention written by one Jannich Brendle. Based on the comments, this Chrome plugin works fine. Nevertheless, I prefer my NoFollow bookmarklet for Chrome, because color jumps out better.

Note: NoFollow will detect which links have been marked with rel=nofollow, but they won't tell you which content on a page search engines see.

A website can set up a robots.txt page to tell search engines not to crawl/index low-content areas of the site. For instance, here's Squidoo's robots.txt file. It blocks search engines from crawling lensmaster tools, for example.

More importantly, content can be cloaked or generated on the fly by scripts that run at the time a webpage is loading. This content is usually not indexed by search engines. For instance, here's what's called a "Featured Lenses Module," listing some of my other articles. Squidoo's generating it with a script, possibly to avoid duplicate content issues. Take a look at what Google sees of it by Googling the following:

cache:http://www.squidoo.com/nodofollow-plugin-chrome-firefox

Scroll down and you'll see that the section below is not stored in Google's cache.

I'm getting a little off-topic, however: links hidden by scripts are a separate issue from rel=nofollow, the topic of this page. Above, I shared a free tool that I use to make sure I've used rel=nofollow on all my affiliate links. There's just one problem. I'm not convinced that I should be adding rel=nofollow to affiliate links, despite the fact that many SEO experts insist on it as a "best practice."

The "rel=nofollow for affiliate links debate" is long-running (see that 2005 thread which is a pissing match between several top SEO industry analysts.)

The official, definitive word from Google is this FAQ page on paid links and rel=nofollow. But what are "paid links" versus other links?

Google is specificially trying to get us to use rel=nofollow to distinguish links we're paid to place on a page from "editorial" links which represent our genuine support and recommendation of something we find worthwhile. Some SEO experts assert that if you get a commission for it, it's a paid link. But if I'm recommending my cat's favorite cat carrier as a good carrier for taking a pet on the airplane, it is an editorial: I wasn't solicited to plug that particular product; instead, I wanted to earn some money to support myself, so I looked for products I USE and LIKE that I could review and recommend. That's an editorial choice, based on my experience and honest opinion.

Google's webmaster guidelines say we should rel=nofollow advertising, like the banner ads at the top of this page whose content I haven't hand-picked. Google also asks that we use rel=nofollow when buying and selling links that pass pagerank. For example, I might say, "Hey, my Greece diary has a page rank 5; pay me $100 and I'll put your link on it!"

But that's a very different thing from choosing to review something you like and get a commission for it. It's even different from affiliating with, say, Clickbank, and writing pages promoting certain products. That's not buying and selling a link for pagerank; it's hiring you to write an infomercial. Where is the dividing line between "advertising" and "editorial recommendation"? Unfortunately, there isn't one -- it's a spectrum!

Many SEO experts also cite a particular interview with Matt Cutts, official Google Spokespundit, to push the idea that Google has said we should rel=nofollow affiliate links. But in fact, Matt Cutts didn't say that. His discussion is clearly about ads served up by advertising companies to your site: content you haven't hand-picked.