I follow, you follow, no follow?

I keep hearing this phrase over and over again, “no follow”, “href=code +” some tech jargon that only Whittle can understand, but what does “no follow” mean and how do I check other sites or even my own for no follow links?

In January, our very own Brad Lawless posted an incredibly informative blog post explaining what “no follow links” mean, why Collective Bias was now adopting it as a policy for all outgoing blogger content and how you can make your own links no follow within a blog post. My biggest question at the time we implemented this policy (and maybe your question now) was how do I check for no follow links on blog posts from Social Fabric® members or even on our own blog posts to ensure that we are compliant with Google’s policy?

Well fear not fellow Internet lovers, I bring you the “it’s so easy Jerra could do it” way to check for no follow links on any site you would like, and to make it even easier for you I have included both Mac and PC user instructions. Hopefully these tips will help you avoid the HTML code induced headache I experienced the first few times checking for no follow links!

For Mac and PC Users:

Pull up the website that you would like to check in your browser.

(On Mac) Click on View and Developer

(On PC) Click on the wrench in the top right corner of the browser, then click on Tools

(On Mac and PC) click on View Source

A separate window will pop up with the code that controls the back end of the website you are checking (I know it looks like Chinese to me too)

(on Mac) Type in Command + F on your keyboard (on PC, Control + F) , a little finder bar like this will show up in the top right corner:

Type in the brand or link that you would like to check to make sure has a no follow link on it (in this case Brad)

Scroll through the mentions of the brand (just hit enter to scroll through them) and look for any mention of the brand with what looks to be a link to another full website next to it (in this case it happens to be Brad’s profile page on Collective Bias

Make sure that somewhere within the bracket containing <a href=” it contains rel=”nofollow” before the bracket is closed, in this case the no follow code ends the bracket, others may have other items after the mention, as long as the no follow code is found with the link you are a-ok!

And, it is as simple as that! You can use this method for any link you would like to check within the post and make you or the post you are checking is no follow friendly!

Related posts: