Ask HN: Why do some HN links have rel=nofollow | Hacker News Reader

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

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Ask HN: Why do some HN links have rel=nofollow? Example: Octopart (YC W07) is hiring frontend engineers in NYC

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.

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.

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?

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.

Although this is also a no follow as well http://www.slideshare.net/charlesmiglietti/read-smarter-not-...

Example http://octopart.com/jobs/frontend-engineer

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.

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