Unexpected nofollow attribute effects in PageRank

Until now, it has been understood that using the nofollow attribute eliminates the PageRank calculation link passed to linked pages, but a recent statement from a Google spokeswoman casts doubt on that claim.

The graph proposed by Matt Cutts (see links at the bottom of the page) shows how PR is communicated through links, internal or external.

It can be seen that PR is divided by the number of links and distributed among the pages.

When you reference the nofollow attribute, the reference is ignored and the PR is distributed among other pages.

That's not quite true anymore, Matt Cutts said in a recent statement:

Suppose you have 10 connections and 5 of them in nofollow. It is assumed that the remaining 5 receive ALL PageRank and this may already be untrue.

This is expressed in the following very simplified scheme, since the transfer of PR is not so simple:

If you own 10 PageRank points for distribution between ten links, and 5 are blocked, the remaining 5 will not see 2. He will always have only one. The $5 you think you got has evaporated.

This is confirmed by Google in the PageRank Sculpting article quoted in the conclusion:

Initially, all five links without nofollow would receive 2 points from PageRank (in principle, links in nofollow are not taken into account when dividing PageRank by the value provided by the page). More than a year ago, Google changed the way PageRank is distributed so that 5 links without nufollow will receive 1 PageRank point each.

Nofollow was designed for a page that cannot be indexed because there is no interest in the index (for example, in a form).

It is easy for a search engine to assess the value of pages that are on nofollow by the number of links it owns, depending on their PR acquired by other pages, other sites.

From there, if the engine cost page is placed in nofollow, we can conclude that the webmaster wants to get PR from this link for other pages. This is actually an algorithm manipulation. Seeing that webmasters for this purpose fluently use nofollow and thereby prohibit the exploration of part of the useful content of the site, it was decided that in this case the link would be ignored, and the corresponding PR would simply be canceled and not transferred .

What conclusion can be drawn from this?

Just avoid manipulation, put pages in nofollow that should not be indexed by engines and not others. Or use dynamic links in JavaScript, but do not place them in the onclick event, as it is now taken into account by search engines!

On June 15, Matt Cutts spoke on this topic in an article called PageRank sculpting. The content confirms the previous conclusion. He also gave an interview to clarify this point: Out Spoken Media.