Time for Google to change the emphasis?

[McTaggart]

Why doesn't Google recommend that links are nofollow as standard, via HTML5, etc., with follow being added if the link is on a quality site (defined by PR, or whatever.) and adds value. Wouldn't this save alot of time? Then they could whack all the sites with coding that doesn't comply, couldn't they?

Also, instead of enabling negative SEO, why doesn't Google simply focus on wiping out the sites developed simply to pass on PR. I'm sure we could all send them a few thousand suggestions!

[AndieF]

Hi Luke,

You raise some interesting points.

I imagine the main problem here is that the web is meant to be open and shared. In almost all circumstances you should only be linking out where somebody else's website provides good value to your users. Nofollow then becomes useful when you're linking out in things like comments, where you as the site's editor can't actually endorse the quality of the linked site.

By swapping that paradigm around it's assumed that every site is "bad until proven worthy" - but because the web is already built up of billions of links that don't have nofollow it's kind of too late for that mentality to work.

Google does take and act on spam reports which you can do so at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en if you believe sites are designed to spam.

• Andrew