

Ask HN: Why do some HN links have rel=nofollow - acard

Ask HN: Why do some HN links have rel=nofollow? Example: Octopart (YC W07) is hiring frontend engineers in NYC
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itsprofitbaron
Your example is a job post (they don't have the ability to upvote/comment on
them either) and they end up disappearing from the Jobs page after a period of
time: <http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

The ones which have nofollow on them are new listings and YC company job
posts. Additionally any new listing which hit the front page may appear as a
no follow for a period of time before, converting to followed links.

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Charlesmigli
It's to avoid people to post links in comments and benefit from HN's
popularity to increase their rank in the search engines results. By specifying
rel=nofollow HN indicates the crawlers from Google not to count this hyperlink
as a reference in their ranking algorithm. This is a common practice that you
can see on other popular forums.

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jqueryin
Just as an aside, I think he's specifically referring to that particular
instance on the front page as opposed to some of the newer posts. New posts
seem to have rel="nofollow", but it doesn't explain why that particular job
posting has rel="nofollow". Perhaps it's a combination of being a new post but
auto front-paged due to it being a YC alum job?

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acard
Yes, that's exactly what I was referring to, I have seen them all as nofollow
on the latest new section, however on the front page only that one is nofollow
even though all of them are external links. But as you just said maybe is
because it is a YC job post.

~~~
acard
Although this is also a no follow as well
[http://www.slideshare.net/charlesmiglietti/read-smarter-
not-...](http://www.slideshare.net/charlesmiglietti/read-smarter-not-harder)

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acard
Example <http://octopart.com/jobs/frontend-engineer>

~~~
skulquake
I've been wondering the same thing. My assumption was that it was for new
links so HN doesn't get spammed to death by offering do-follow links to new
stories. Once the link has been vetted by the community only then does it go
do-follow. But thats just my $0.02.

