A recent change in the way Google tracks links has affected those involved in the practice of “PageSculpting.” PageSculpting is essentially a way of controlling your link juice so that certain links get more than others. In the past, if you had a certain number of links on your page, each one would get equal authority from your main page. A way to adjust this situation was to “nofollow” some of the links, so that those links would get no link juice and the juice they did get would be redistributed to your other links.
New Rules for Google
This is no longer the case. Now, all links get the same amount of authority (unless Google itself finds some reason to decide otherwise), it’s just the nofollow ones don’t benefit from it. This does not mean that your current setup is not optimized: it may be that there was no benefit to getting PageRank on those nofollow pages, and having them doesn’t actually hurt your site.
SEO Evolution: Adapt or Perish
What it does mean is that search engine optimization criteria is constantly changing, and it doesn’t just affect black hatters whose only concern is “chasing the algorithm.” SEO is a constantly adjusting business; if you’re not on top of it every day, adapting to every change, you could be left behind.
