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Some months ago Matt Cutts informed us that PageRank Sculpting is not possible any more by using the rel=nofollow attribute. Nofollow method is straightforward and time efficient comparing to other methods such as iframes, javascript, Java, flash etc. An other problem is that the sites that already use nofollow might suffer a PR loss.

Using rel=nofollow for PageRank sculpting is still possible by using a special free Javascript/PHP script. What is does is that just before the HTML code is sent to the user, it scans for nofollowed links and it replaces them with obfuscated javascript, post requests etc. The URLs are encoded and they can not be detected by Google.

This script has been tested for more than 3 months and it seems it works very good with all the browsers.

You can download the script, find installation instructions and more info about how it works in this site:
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting-you-can-still-use-nofollow/

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The on-the-fly obfuscation approach described by and the historical context noted by both highlight why this topic still comes up — people want a predictable way to control how link value flows. That said, the proposed JS/PHP replacement has several real-world risks and operational costs that are not spelled out in the thread.

First, modern search engines execute JavaScript, so client-side obfuscation is not a guaranteed way to hide links from crawlers. Second, intentionally hiding or altering link targets to influence ranking signals can be interpreted as manipulative behavior and may trigger manual or algorithmic penalties. Third, replacing normal anchors with scripted links breaks accessibility, degrades analytics and referrer data, can conflict with Content Security Policy, and creates failure modes for users or bots that do not run JavaScript.

If the technique is still being evaluated, run careful tests and monitoring before deploying:

  • Use Search Console URL Inspection (live test) and a headless renderer (Chrome Lighthouse or Puppeteer) to see exactly what crawlers would render.
  • Check server logs to confirm whether crawlers are requesting the original targets or the obfuscated endpoints.
  • Test with JavaScript disabled and with assistive technologies to ensure usable fallbacks.
  • Deploy in staging, watch index/coverage reports and organic traffic, and keep an eye on manual-action notifications.

Safer, more maintainable alternatives usually give better long-term results: prune unneeded links, consolidate or canonicalize low-value pages, use noindex for pages you do not want indexed, and focus internal linking on priority pages. If paid or sponsored links are the concern, use the appropriate rel attributes rather than obfuscation. If the obfuscation route is chosen despite the caveats, implement it only as a last resort, provide non-JS fallbacks, avoid user-agent sniffing that serves different markup to bots, and document rollback steps.

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Member Avatar for quicktpgo

Although in the SEO world it feels like a lifetime ago since nofollow appeared, it's actually only been around since January of 2005, when Google announced it was adopting support for the new HTML tag.

Very simply, rel="nofollow", when attached to a link, tells the engines not to ascribe any of the editorial endorsements or "votes" that would boost a page/site's query independent ranking metrics.

Member Avatar for bbriniotis

Yes but many changes happened on June. Google handles it in a different way.

Check out this blog post:
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting-techniques-nofollow-issue/
and also the original announcement of Matt Catts:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

That's why using nofollow for pr sculpting could lead to pr loss. By using the above method you do not need to worry for this problem :)

Edited by bbriniotis because: n/a
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