Page rank sculpting is trying to change how the page rank flow within your site using various method like adding nofollow attribute etc. To understand how Page rank sculpting works first you need to understand how page rank works. This post by Matt Cutts who is the head of Google's web spam team has a good explanation about page rank and page rank sculpting.After going through the blog post what I felt was that the nofollow attribute is only useful for disclosing paid links. In the comments section Matt even encourages removing nofollow from pages like privacy policy and terms of service. Below quote from the blog post explains how page rank used to work and how it works now after the changes made by Google.
So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.
As you can see this is going to be a big problem for bloggers , especially for blogs that gets lots of comments. Even though you add nofollow to the links they are still leaking page rank. A possible solution is to have a third party comment system like DISQUS , Intense Debate which are based on iframe or java script. In one of my previous posts I blogged about the benefits of using DISQUS. Andy beard gives a much deeper look into DISQUS comment system and why a comment system like DISQUS is a good solution to the page rank leakage.
Should I change? I doesn't know all the technical stuff about DISQUS, I had try using it but it looks awful with the design of my blog, I know Michel Fortin (Number 1 Internet Copywriter) said that DISQUS is a good comment plugin, but still I have trouble putting into my blog… hmmm…
I didn't have much trouble installing it and there are some good guides to help you change. After the recent changed in nofollow handling I think every blogger should consider moving
will check ur post on DISCUS
Perhaps we have mistaken page rank? Should we pass the juice? Naturally Google has it's filters and if you link to poor quality sites you will be affected in a negative manner.
Right now you have no follow on your Recent Comment URL links. Is this hurting your blog any?
I think Google's main concern was no follow allowed a user to add no follow to all links but 1. That's a lot of juice for 1 link now isn't it?
Apparently no follow tags have not been working and ignored now for over 18 weeks.
Google is a substance of change it seems.
The risk of linking to poor quality sites is one of the main reasons why I don't believe in removing nofollow from comments.
Thanks you for pointing out the recent comments widget , I will remove it now , I added it because then it is easy for me to quickly go through the comment and reply , after using DISQUS now I can reply from the dashboard so I can easily remove it now.
You are correct about why Google changed the way nofollow is handled , webmasters were manipulating page rank using that technique.
nofollow tags are working and they are still used , but there use is limited now to few things like disclosing paid links etc
Excellent blog, thanks for the share. I'll be a regular viewer