I suppose the more important question is:  Does it really matter?  Since the inception of the rel=”nofollow” attribute of the <A> tag for hyperlinking, SEO has become easier because it became more controllable.  As a web developer, we focused a lot of time to create Page Rank and because of that, we were very protective of who we shared this page rank with.

The nofollow attribute allowed us to create hyperlinks that would not share your “page rank juice” with links that you specified.  Further, we were able to use nofollow attributes to create a dynamic SEO structure within our own website (a strategy that I discuss extensively with my clients of NetWebVideo).

These strategies of dynamic linking and selective outbound linking has resulted in great success with all of my SEO campaigns.

Now in 2008, the importance of Page Rank seems to be dwindling and the effectiveness of the nofollow is in question.  I think it can be proven that search engine spiders DO follow and sometimes index pages from these nofollow links.  What we don’t know is it impact on the pages’ popularity, from an SEO standpoint.

Do these nofollow outbound links “bleed Page Rank?”

Maybe, maybe not.  But I don’t think that Page Rank, as a number, means much any more.  It doesn’t mean that Google has some hidden page rank we don’t see that DOES MATTER!

As people are freaking out about these nofollows and whether or not to use them, my advice is simple:

Use them and stick with your current SEO strategy.  The cost of adding this rel=”nofollow” attribute is minimal at most and if these do have the SLIGHTEST bit of influence in commanding top organic listing positions, then it is well worth it.

To ignore it (or removing it from a current website) serves no purpose.

Remember that SEO is still (and will always be) a guessing game.  Adding the rel=”nofollow” is one of the few proactive things you can do to your on-page optimizing that really cannot harm you (like changing a Title, an H1 tag or the content of a page).

cheers…matt