When do I use no-follow links to interlink on my own site?

[Travis-W]

Hi Mozzers,

When would I ever want to use no-follow links when interlinking pages on my site?  The more authority being passed around, the better, right?

Does it save or conserve page rank / authority from being transferred to pages you don't necessarily need it on?

Thanks!

[TakeshiYoung]

You almost never want to nofollow your own links.

Nofollowing your own links does not result in more link juice being passed around, it just results in link juice "evaporation" where you lose the value that would have been passed to that page without the nofollow. See:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow

If there is a page on your site you don't want indexed, use noindex,follow in the header instead. That will keep the page from getting indexed while preserving link equity.

[Jeepster]

Oddly enough this is the third time this question has popped up in the past week or so (!)

I refer you to my previous answer:

Matt Cutts says: _Don't _no-follow internal links: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bVOOB_Q0MZY

[jesse-landry]

yeah i've noticed this too. strange i wonder why that is/

[WilliamCarr]

My rule is to only no-follow sponsored links.

Google is going to recognize a SEOed site that has tried to sculpt their link juice by excessively no following. Sites that naturally rank well (and produce content people want) don't utilize this technique.

[Travis-W]

Whoops, my bad.

I've been away from the Q+A for a bit.

[jesse-landry]

Oh no it wasn't a judgement on you just odd that the question is so common currently. As if something happened where confusion was created on a mass scale. Anyway, no apology necessary it's a fair question.