Microsoft technical evangelist Robert Scoble has written several times about the recent rel=’nofollow’ move by Google and others, most recently labeling it the “no nofollow religion”

The way some of his commentary reads — at least to this writer – Scoble seems to carry some sort of disdain for (or at least an arrogance over) those who have blown more holes in rel=’nofollow’ than swiss cheese. Admittedly, I am in the ‘on the fence group’ that is not totally against nofollow, but there are some elements of nofollow that I am very against. If you really want to read what I’m against do a search on this blog for “nofollow” and you can go from there.

However, one thing that has made me curious by Scoble’s intensified attention on this issue is his totally unproven assertion that by his linking to a website through his blog he’ll automatically give the linked site a Google Page Rank of 5. I’ve seen him make this claim several times in several places as if he knows this for a fact.

If this is the case, then certainly he has some sort of data to back this claim up? I sincerely doubt that this is accurate (and a quick review of his older archives proves this false, so keep reading), but still, I would like to see some new test cases where he takes a PR0 to PR5 with simply one link from his blog.  This particular blog had a Google PR of 5 long before Scoble linked to it, so this wouldn’t reinforce Scoble’s claim, but there are plenty of new blogs and/or websites out there with PR0 to use. With Scoble’s voracious RSS daily reading (he reads around 1000 sources, according to Bloglines) he should be able to find several good test cases.

Therefore, I invite Scoble to pick some PR0 websites (that he likes, of course) and link to them and then show the rest of us disbelievers that one link will change the site to a PR5 (or greater) during Google’s next PR update (frequency is quarterly these days, it seems).

My point isn’t to trash Scoble here, but to point out that there isn’t any single website who has this much SE relevance power (for lack of a better word), even Winer’s scripting.com that is one of the few PR8 website’s out there. Some owners of sites with higher PR scores like to boast about this score like it’s some huge nuclear web weapon but the reality is that, though valuable and impressive, it’s not singularly that effective. That’s what makes this whole nofollow argument of link promoting and demoting on a single website more problematic than helpful.

From what I understand about Google Page Rank, and I’m certainly no expert, the PR that is displayed in the toolbar is bogus anyway and not the true Page Rank of a page (so how does Scoble know a link from his blog only gives any site a PR5?), so this test is difficult to prove. However, for this purpose of this test we can go off the PR number shown in the Google toolbar before Scoble links to the PR0 sites he chooses and then wait for the next Google PR update and check the sites again. If Scoble wants to choose multiple sites then the more the merrier. Rather than make this a negative experiment, let’s have some fun with this Robert

Of course, for those who have already clicked and checked, a visit through Scoble’s blog archives would already disprove his claim. Let’s take a look at some sites from at least six months ago:

• On June 13, 2004 Scoble linked to about section for Michaeal Hyatt.
  PR then? Unknown. PR today: 4
• Dave Kingston’s blog was linked on June 12:
  PR then? Unknown. PR today: 4
• On the same day Scoble linked to Bernie Simon’s blog.
  PR then? Unknown. PR today: 3

We could go on and on — and so could others who want to spend even five minutes digging – but the reality is that Scoble’s blog doesn’t have that much relevancy to make a single link from his blog make another site a PR5. Sure, it might help a PR3 or PR4 move closer to a PR5, but the reality is that his blog doesn’t possess the power to move a blog up that much in the Google PR food chain.

Again, I’m not posting this because I dislike Scoble or anything, because I’ve met him and I do like him, but I think it might be wise (or at least to throw up a disclaimer) to stop posting around the web in comments and on his blog something that is untrue, unproven and inaccurate. Hey, if someone catches me with my fly open, I’ll gladly publish a retraction.

Scoble seems mostly enamored by rel=’nofollow’ because now he can link to folks and not improve their situation but the reality is that his site, though influential with a PR7 isn’t as powerful as SE referrer as he seems to think:

There’s an interesting theme on all the “anti-nofollow” posts I’ve seen (and I’ve read dozens). They all assume they are entitled to search engine juice. Well, I don’t believe in that as an entitlement. I believe a link is earned, not given automatically.

The only “entitlement” that I feel is that webmasters should be entitled to make this choice, not have larger organizations make it for them (like TypePad is doing by invoking nofollow on every Typepad hosted blogs). Also, as someone else already noted in Scoble’s comments which are all enforcing rel=’nofollow’, through a basic redirect script he could have impacted the juice of those sites. We used to use one here, but don’t do that any more. Why? I want those who leave good comments — whether they disagree with me or not – to get some SE juice. Spammers and personal attacks are already removed from the comments.

I think it’s a nice perk for the comments area to give the juice to legitimate commenters but this decision should be, no, must be up to every website owner individually to decide. If Scoble wants to use it, that’s fine, but Google also agreed with me that this decision about whether to use it or not belongs to each individual webmaster not any single company or group.

Update 2/1/2005: A comment from Scoble’s former boss says it was true for his blog and that maybe the results sampled above were too old, so here’s some more current results:

• (Nov 11, 2004): radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/11.html#a8615
  Michael Gall: PR then? Unknown. PR today: zero
• (Nov 11 2004) radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/01.html#a8552
  Access Downtown: PR then? Unknown. PR now: 4
• (Oct 20, 2004) radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/20.html#a8444
  Matthew Corsier’s blog: PR then? Unknown. PR now: 4
• (Oct 20, 2004) radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/20.html#a8443
  Dylan Greene: PR then? Unknown. PR now: 4
• (Oct 20, 2004) radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/20.html#a8447
  Another of Scoble’s own sites. PR then? Unknown. PR now: 4
  scobleizer.manilasites.com/2001/10/29

Did this post make you go hmm?

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