It seems like Google has two fewer sites to worry about when it comes to link schemes or manipulation. Forbes, Entrepreneur and Inc have just started to add nofollow attributes to external links in their articles. As many of you know, and as we covered in the past sites like Forbes, Inc, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and others are constantly being used by link buyers and sellers sell links and PageRank.
Google said in the past those links are ignored anyway but it did not stop link sellers from selling them. In fact, I get at least an email a day from a link broker trying to sell me links on these types of sites.
Matthew Barby first noticed and posted on Twitter that these sites started to nofollow those links now. Marie Haynes confirmed it as well.
Forbes and Inc both silently began adding nofollow to all of their links. There's a lot of link sellers that will hate that 😂
— Matthew Barby (@matthewbarby) August 29, 2017
I am not sure if it is on all articles or just the guest contributor stories...
And Inc links are nofollowed now too. pic.twitter.com/sCQ8J20e0J
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 29, 2017
Yup. Forbes links are nofollowed now. pic.twitter.com/ygFbnJgBkj
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 29, 2017
Here is an email I got from one of the many link sellers just a couple days ago:
I am an Advertising Sales Manager at [redacted], and I can help you do media outreach that gets results. I will help you pitch all High-Quality sites to publish an article with a link to your site.We can also publish on premium sites like huffingtonpost.com, inc.com & entrepreneur.com & many more sites like those.
The pricing includes complete content ideation, creation, pitching, and publication. You do not need to and you cannot provide your own article for High-Quality sites.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I'll be glad to help.
Thanks! Cooper
So all those links you bought on those sites are now worthless, or maybe it was worthless the whole time?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
