The new “no follow” linking rule that Google and the other search engines want to establish will in effect do what they want it to do. Bring down the numbers of comment spam and trackback spam links. Unfortunately though, I have the feeling that it will slowly be killing relevant search results Online. Why? The reason is people are greedy.

With the introduction of this, the search engines are creating a tool for the popular Web master to pimp for his advantage. No longer can you make an agreement for a link exchange between two similar Web sites. Now you will have to worry about if they will give you a “real” link, or if they will be handing you one of these new “no follow” links.

In that effect, the search engine results will become more bias towards content cliques and less focused on friendly linking. I have neither the time or the effort to check Google to make sure everybody who is linking to me is not using the “no follow” rule. I just have to focus on dealing with people I can trust.

For myself, when I write an article and allow it to be published elsewhere, I am not only looking for the average viewer to click the link back to me to find out more articles and information. I am also looking for that proverbial PageRank push. I have worked hard to follow the search engine rules, and be more focused on good content rather than search engine tricks. In effect, I could get punished right along with the spammers.

I can promise you I will not be putting this code into any of my pages myself. If I have a link here, it is because I wanted it to be here because it was relevant in one way or the other. If somebody gets a PageRank bump because of it, good for them. Honestly I don’t have that much of a problem with comment or trackback spam due to people having to sign up and register before they can comment here.

I think that is a much more reliable solution than this new “no follow” code. So far the best article I have read on the subject comes from kuro5hin.org. I suggest if you are interested in seeing the issue from a different perspective, you check it out there. So will the new linking rule kill relevance Online? Let me know what you think.