Google has changed the way in which marketers can work with PageRank to promote important pages and guide the search engine away from lesser pages, it has been revealed.
Matt Cutts, engineer at Google, told the SMX Advanced event this week that those utilising the 'nofollow' attribute to divide PageRank between vital pages after diverting it away from unimportant content will now see PageRank that goes unused dissipate rather than become available for use elsewhere.
"You can almost think of it as just evaporating," he said, as WebProNews reported. Google has previously said it used a similar tactic on YouTube, which was seen by search engine optimisation executives as an endorsement of the practice.
However, marketers have been warned against changing their website in response to this announcement before receiving more information directly from Google by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.
SMX Advanced also saw Google state that links in JavaScript which previously went unread by the search engine due to being invisible are now being read - something that may affect those using paid links in such content.
"If you're selling paid links and thought JavaScript was protecting you, I would fairly quickly ensure that redirects are blocked by using 'nofollow' within the JavaScript itself or by going through a robots.txt block," Mr Sullivan advised.
.jpg)
.gif){kind=small}
