Google Confirms: Changing Nofollow Was About Link Signal

Google’s Gary Illyes, currently in Japan for a Webmaster Conference, explained a motive for treating rel=nofollow as a hint. He said it was about improving the link signal and for returning better search results. According to Gary Illyes’ answer, Google was missing useful link signal information because of nofollows. Many in the search community have lamented the misuse of nofollows. Many sites nofollowed all outbound links, without using any discretion. That kind of activity can have the impact of removing an important source of link information from Google. Gary Illyes appears to have confirmed the motivation of improving the link signal. By improving the link signal, Google has the opportunity to return better search results.