By default, all user submitted links will have a nofollow attribute added to deter inappropriate or potentially damaging behaviour. This includes all links on user profiles, as robots.txtignores all profile information.
However, there are exceptions that can be managed by admins to improve the relevance of certain links to your site and your trusted users.
Exclusions:
Staff posts - as the setting suggests, this setting applies to users. Staff are presumed to act in the interests of the site, or to share relevant links that benefit the community, so their links are followed.
Trust Level 3 users - regular users who have gained TL3 status can benefit from having links followed to reward them for engagement and time invested. Like staff, they are presumed to act in the interests of the site. This setting can be disabled.
Whitelisted domains (and subdomains) - admins can whitelist the domains they wish to associate with their site, and should include the domain of their own site.
Settings
Go to Admin Settings / Spam
by default, the add rel nofollow to user content is checked
This setting allows internal links, and links to content on the same site but outside of Discourse, to be followed. This increases the visibility of relevant and useful content, and increases the relationship between the sites.
You can use this setting to also allow links to related and trusted sites, but note that there can be SEO penalties applied for excessive numbers of links.
Enter the most appropriate parent domain (example.com) as this will also whitelist all subdomains (sub.example.com).
Tip: when including a site on a popular domain, include only the specific subdomain (e.g. myblog.wordpress.com) to avoid whitelisting all other subdomains.
AFAIK there’s no way to do that—but I might be wrong. Perhaps adding support for {:rel=“nofollow”} notation (which some markdown engines already support) would be a good idea?
E.g. [Google](https://google.com){:rel="nofollow"}
Sometimes have to answer (or tell things) using really low quality links. I have that kind case right now and that’s why I found this topic
But the last thing then is rewarding such site with a bit better SEO-value giving incoming link. Sure, nofollow is just a suggestion, but it is strong one.
So, admin may want to allow following in general, but not allways. I don’t see any reason why nofollow should be on/off option.
I have the same problem. I am adding some external links to my post as an admin. I want those links to be marked nofollow. But Discourse is making it too complex to add “rel=nofollow”
Nope. The term ”link juice” is quite yesterday but SEO-value comes from totally different metrics. Nofollow doesn’t mean anything there either. If googlebot follows that link it is counted, no matter if there is nofollow or not.
There is only one solution: don’t link — and that kind tool is missing now: deleting links automatically when nofollow is really wanted.
This is same situation (but different story) than when webmasters still believe H-tags has something to do with SEO
Now I have to ask… can you? Any of those links don’t tell what you claimed. You can start googling googlebot+nofollow.
You are now asking if I’m willing to open basics how ranking works. Sorry — for you asking that took around one minute and now I should spend something like 12 hours to explain that to you. That is not… very balanced request.
But if you aren’t willing to search & learn by yourself you can re-read those resources — that one where is words still and signal is good starting point. And yet you have to understand when googlebot follow AND not follow request named nofollow.
As anything. But it is still just a hint and by relevance Google makes its own decision, not by nofollow. That’s why no one can’t trust or rely on that.
Different thing, but similar one: sometimes google follows robots.txt, sometimes it doesn’t bother even look at it and defenetly not follow it. Links in gmail is the best known situation.
Right. I think understand what you’re trying to imply, but the misinformation you’re spreading is downright dangerous advice. Let me take the time to explain my claims. There might be a communication break down here and I’m assuming that you are claiming that “nofollow” is altogether meaningless.
Why do you care what Google indexes outside of your domains? If you care about your own pages not being indexed, use the robots meta tag and robots.txt. Do not solely rely on robots.txt as displayed here.
Nofollow is not useless or meaningless. It is a selfish policy that retains pagerank.(Google founder whitepaper) Pagerank being the original ranking factor may not be prominent today, but do not state qualifying links with nofollow are meaningless. That is dangerous, misleading, and lazy with that blanket statement.
I agree that “link juice” is outdated and industry jargon but pagerank still is a key ranking factor. See Ahref’s blog post on pagerank. Again, who cares what Google follows, as long as you have control of endorsement and association.
Again, who cares what Google follows, as long as you have control of endorsement and association. See top of post for noindex.
These are basic concepts, I laid them out for you. You may be a webmaster but digital marketing is my day job. SEO is part of my daily puzzle.
Will I need to “rebake” posts after clicking this option for it to take effect? - Im the admin of the forum with a Trust level 4 and seems external links are dofollow, I’d like to change that.
Edit Just re-read the posts above mine and seems Im not the only one. I’m assuming there is no workaround for Admins?
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