As you know, Danny Sullivan is somewhat new to working at Google - for decades he worked from the other end of the field, from the SEO industries perspective. Now he is working for Google and has to explain Google's position on guidelines and why they do what they do. It must be super weird for Danny because it is super weird for me to read his responses.
This may be the first time he tackled a link nofollow vs follow guideline question in detail on Twitter. It was triggered by a question from Rand Fishkin:
.@searchliaison Clarifying Q on "link schemes": If a publisher's licensing agreement requires search engine follow-able links to republish their content, does that violate Google's guidelines? Or is it kosher to ask for a followed link if someone's republishing your stuff?
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) August 6, 2018
I believe if John Mueller would have answered it, he would have responded in one tweet and one tweet alone and said something like, they should not be required to have to use a follow link and you probably should tell them to use a nofollow attribute on the link. But Danny didn't answer it that way. Here are Danny's tweets:
If you said here's my content, but it's a copy of what I wrote over at this other place, and please link to that straight. Probably fine as well. Probably fine if you even said please link using the same headline or whatever....
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 6, 2018
As always, I'd beg people to actually understand the nuance, that it's not binary situation. The intent is going to be important. My inbox is flooded by people who offer me posts in exchange for "one simple link." That's almost certainly going to be a link scheme....
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 7, 2018
Again, nuance and perspective. You want to say someone should link to you for a unique work in a single license agreement, that's not much of a "link scheme." You do that with the same work over and over again, now it's feeling like you have a different intent than fair credit.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 7, 2018
Yep that’s a good summary.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 7, 2018
Again, two different people, two different ways to answer it. If it was me, and I was working for Google (I am not going to work for Google), I would have said, you should not require in your licensing agreement to use follow links. I know many sites that have such licensing agreements and they are totally cool if you say you are going to nofollow those links. Good thing I don't work for Google.
Here is how Danny ended it:
Yes, I can see the "Google says it's OK to demand links" headlines already. Which isn't going to get all the qualifications in that :)
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 7, 2018
Again, I've been tracking how Google answers these questions for 15 years or so. How GoogleGuy would have responded versus Matt Cutts (who was GoogleGuy) versus John Mueller or Gary Illyes and now Danny Sullivan. Let me give you my best guesses at their responses from all of them:
GoogleGuy : We didn't have a nofollow attribute when I was around, so do what you want. :)
Matt Cutts: I'd suggest they nofollow the links but if it is done in moderation, I doubt we would take action. But to be safe, nofollow those links.
John Mueller: Those links should be nofollowed and the licensing agreement should not require followed links.
Gary Illyes: We don't use links in our algorithm, instead we use DA (sarcasm)
Danny Sullivan: Well, see above - no need to speculate.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
