To better control page indexing, use ‘noindex’ on pages rather than ‘nofollow’ tags on internal links
Adding rel=”nofollow” tags to internal links is not recommended as a way to control indexing. Instead, John suggests adding noindex tags to pages that you don’t want indexed, or removing internal links to them altogether.
External Links Shown in GSC Can Contain Disavowed or Nofollowed Links
The external links shown in Google Search Console are a sample of all the links found by Google, so not all of them will be displayed in the tool. The sample data may include links that have been disavowed or nofollowed.
Main Change With New Nofollow Attributes is For Outbound Links
The plan for the update to rel=nofollow links becoming a hint is to make it so that minimal changes are required when using nofollow links internally on a site. John believes they will continue to see internal nofollow pages as not as important to be crawled or indexed. We asked a number of top SEO experts for their opinion on these changes and the impact they anticipate, you can find out more in our post here.
Nofollow X-Robots-Tag Wouldn’t Stop Google Following a Redirect
A nofollow X-Robots-Tag wouldn’t stop Google from following a server-side redirect, as Google wouldn’t even look at the content of the page so there would be no links to follow anyway.
Guest Post Links Should Be Nofollowed
John recommends having rel=nofollow on the links in guest posts.
Nofollow Obsolete When Noindex Already Present
When a page is noindexed, not only will it be removed from the index but also over time all of the links associated with the page will be removed from the link graph so nofollow is made obsolete.
Use Nofollow to Stop Googlebot Crawling Too Far
Google recommends using internal nofollow links to stop Googlebot crawling too far in one direction e.g. endless calendar links, faceted navigation and pagination.
Googlebot Crawls URLs in JavaScript Code But Treats Them as Nofollow
Googlebot crawls urls found in JavaScript code and automatically nofollows them. If the JavaScript modifies the HTML, then Google will respect a nofollow attribute.
Unnatural Links to External Sites Might Cause All Links to be Ignored
Unnatural links to external sites, such as paid links or links within user-generated content may cause Google to lose trust in all the links from a site, so they should be nofollowed.