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Home » Link Building

How to Easily Spot NoFollow Links

Submitted by R.J. Breakaway Adams on Tuesday, 10 June 200830 Comments

Here’s an easy way to find dofollow blogs. This is for Firefox users only. If you don’t use Firefox, I’m sorry, but you should, because there’s many addons such as the one I am about to describe, that can help to increase it’s functionality. If you use another browser, maybe look for a similar plugin for your browser.

For an easy, for sure way to tell if a link is nofollow or not, is to first install a program called Stylish. You can download Stylish here. rel Stylish allows you to change the CSS of one single site, or for all sites, or for just certain aspects of sites. Say that you really want to have the H1 tag of every site to stand out, you can modify the H1 tag to stand out anyway you want.

In order to find nofollow links, we’re going to modify how any A tag (the HTML link tag) with “nofollow” in it looks. The problem with many of the other nofollow checkers, is that they don’t properly decipher rel=”external nofollow” or any other REL tag modifiers in addition to nofollow. So if you are using another nofollow checker, you may actually be wasting your time on sites that don’t pass authority.

So, once you’ve installed Stylish, you’ll be able to modify all of the A tag’s with nofollow in it, whether it is external nofollow or just nofollow. Once Stylish is installed, you will see it in the bottom right hand side of the status bar. Right click on it, and go to “Manage Styles.” Click on “Write…” Add the following code as a new style:

a[rel~=nofollow] {
background-color: pink !important;
color: black !important;
font-weight: normal !important;
text-decoration: underline !important;
border-style: solid !important;
border-top-width: thin !important;
border-bottom-width: thin !important;
border-right-width: thin !important;
border-left-width: thin !important;
}

After adding that code, Make the description say “Nofollow”… Save it as “Nofollow” or something to that effect. Then, right click on the Stylish icon in the bottom right side of the Status Bar. Then go to “Global Styles.” Then choose the “Nofollow” style (or if it’s already clicked, just leave it), and there you have it! All NoFollow links will be pink in color. To check, scroll to the bottom of this page, and look in my footer. Some of the links will be pink (the ones that are nofolllow) and some of them will be the regular color (dofollow).

And there ya go! You no longer have to rely on an addon that doesn’t decipher all instances of rel=”nofollow” correctly, nor do you have to go to view the source code and find the exact link every time. If it’s pink it’s nofollow, if it’s not pink, it’s dofollow!

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30 Comments »

  • Sacramento Weddings said:

    I’ve been using “SeoQuake” (a FireFox plug-in) that easily identifies “no follow” links with a line through the Hyperlink in question.

    For example:

    Best Wedding DJs in Sacramento

    would tell me this is a No-Follow link. What’s truly ironic is that it still Gets Followed by GWT & YSE in the total Link Count. The only thing Not Followed is (1) anchor text & (2) PR-passing. But the link is still valid, it still gets counted by Google & Yahoo & other search engines.

  • Breakaway said:

    Well, it’s common knowledge that yahoo still follows and count nofollow, but it’s weird that GWT shows it….

    Are you sure that SEO quake properly shows rel=”external nofollow”? I know SearchStatus doesn’t, and Search Status doesnt always work if u have a lot of tabs open.

    That’s why i use Stylish. There are many options, but this one for sure shows all instances of nofollow.

  • Blogging 101 » Blog Archive » Link Building Tips (author) said:

    [...] How to Easily Spot NoFollow Links [...]

  • acakadut said:

    any tricks for IE7? :(
    acakaduts last blog post..BearShare Gold Downloader 3.80

  • Breakaway said:

    Yah… you can find it at mozilla.org … haha, download firefox… you’ll never go back!

  • In Plain Sight Episodes said:

    Thats a nice little tip :), thanks.

  • web hosting blog said:

    Stylish is awesome. Now I dont have to spend a couple minutes scanning through html to find the no follow code

  • Blog for Beginners said:

    I just couldn’t find the link for Stylish on the post. Did I miss something here?

    Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..Yet Another 8 CSS Tips For Your Blog

  • Breakaway said:

    Nope, you’re not blind… I am just dumb… I will add it right now…

  • Kevin said:

    I don’t know how I escaped learning this tip, but somehow I did. Thank you for pointing this out. This will save me lots of time.

    Kevins last blog post..Too many meetings!!!

  • Komodo Dragon said:

    Whats GWT?

  • Breakaway said:

    Google Webmaster Tools

  • Blog for Beginners said:

    There I see it now. Thanks for the referral and that wonderful tips.

    Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..Yet Another 8 CSS Tips For Your Blog

  • JBO said:

    Nice work - really getting into your blog.

    The tip with the no follow has really opened my eyes to how some of the bigger sites are controlling their flow of page rank - by making non important pages no follow

    Great tip

    Thanks

  • Shantanu Bala said:

    Awesome! That’s a great hack. I used to use a plugin - I forgot the name :-( - that used to have a similar functionality with a bunch of other SEO related features. Oh well, at least this is a good solution for SEO work!

    Shantanu Balas last blog post..Firefox 3 and Safari 4: Javascript Interpretation

  • Dennis Edell said:

    Great tip BA thanks! What I’ve been doing which is pretty easy is right-click the linked name and check “properties”….just another way :-)
    Dennis Edells last blog post..10 General, Useful Tips To Add To Your Bottom Line

  • Charles said:

    That’s a fantastic plugin. I’m pretty new to trying to build backlinks and stuff like this, and I still don’t have a very good idea as to what’s actually going on, but this plugin should definitely help me out.

    And your blog in general is fantastic. I’ve read 9 articles so far I believe, and all of them have been extremely helpful.

    Charless last blog post..Homelessness in America

  • Hussein said:

    I use seo for firefox (firefox plugin) by seo book. it automatically highlightss nofollow links :D I can see here that LBB comment links were not nofollow\…

    Husseins last blog post..Urduja: Pinoy Animated Movie

  • makkelijk verdienen said:

    yeah i use seo quake plugin in firefox to see this .. works like a charm

    makkelijk verdienens last blog post..Nieuwe bronnen van inkomsten

  • Middle East Post said:

    is that will show the other nofollow format like nofollow external

  • Breakaway said:

    Yes, which is why I am sharing it with everyone! I hated that Search Status firefox addon DID NOT properly show external nofollow as a nofollow link.

  • Freelance Jobs said:

    I use SEO firefox addon by SEO book. Its cool.

  • internet marketing course said:

    Thr firefox plug-in Search Status 1.25 will do this same thing.

  • Breakaway said:

    No, not exactly… i was using search status, and then i realized that they don’t properly read rel=”external nofollow” and therefore, you’ll come across somesites and think they are dofollow when they are nofollow!

  • adda4u said:

    This is cool info …

    nice to use this …

    previously i used firefox plugin

    Now this is good
    -Sri-

  • Claudia said:

    I wonder if you use “external nofollow” tag pay per post programs will know it?

    Claudias last blog post..Do follow in comments

  • UK Insurance News said:

    This is a great tip BA! I have been using Search Status but as I’m pretty new to realizing about the “external nofollow” your hack should solve that :)
    Btw, do you create 2 “Global Styles” - one called “Nofollow” with a[rel~=nofollow] and once called “Ext Nofollow” with a[rel~=external nofollow] or something similar?

    Cheers

    UK Insurance Newss last blog post..Big Profits For Fortis Insurance UK

  • Rickety » Blog Archive » How to not NoFollow (author) said:

    [...] Once loaded, you will need to go to Breakaway’s website and follow the instructions to add his code to the plugin. This is simple to do, just sounds complicated. With everything in place when you go [...]

  • Breakaway said:

    Nope…. no need to…. the ~= means anything that has nofollow in it, including “external nofollow” if it was just = instead of ~= then you’d have to create 2.

  • hire a freelancer said:

    Thank you. This is great. This will save me a lot of time in finding sites that do follow. I use a software that helps me find some sites, but it is limited. I love to visit blogs, and I love to comment. It’s fun to join in the discussions that spread over several blogs. But I love link love, too! Thanks again for this tip.

    Kelli

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