Matt Cutts: Can "nofollow" Links Hurt My Site's Google Search Ranking?

Matt Cutts replying the questions raised one of the person from UK.

He asked "I'm building links, not for SEO but to try and generate direct traffic, if these links are no-follow am I safe from getting any Google penalties? Asked another way, can no-follow links hurt my site?
Tubby Timmy, UK"

Matt Cutts Answer: "No, typically nofollow links cannot hurt your site – so upfront, very quick answer on that point," said Matt Cutts, Google's Distinguished Engineer.

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Google’s Matt Cutts On What To Do If Your Site Was Hit By Panda

Matt’s short answer to the question is to make sure to write high quality content, content at the level of published books or in popular magazines.

Cutts explains that Panda launched on February 24, 2011 and this year has been integrated into the “indexing process” where the algorithm is somewhat baked into the normal ranking algorithms. The reason for this is because now the Panda algorithm impacts a “smaller number of sites” and thus is a safer algorithm to run in an automated way.

So if you notice your traffic dropped and you are "not ranking as high as you were," Matt said. Then you should look at the quality of your content and improve on that. Matt also references a post named More guidance on building high-quality sites by Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search.

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Matt Cutts Reply on Negative SEO Protection

Question: Should I be worried if a couple of sites that I don't want to be associate with are linking to me?

According to Matt Cutts, if you notice there are links pointing back to your site which you believe are causing problems, the first thing to do is ask the Webmaster to have them removed.  There are dozens of generic forms available to help streamline the process so you can send out lots of requests quite quickly.

If the Webmaster refuses to remove the links, or they simply ignore your request, you can use the ‘disavow’ tool from Google.  This is a tool which allows Webmasters to tell Google that they are not associated with the site where this link is coming from, and they do not want that link to be associated with their site.  Essentially it works similar to the nofollow tag, except it is applied by the receiving site rather than on the hosting page.

Once this process has been properly followed, you should continue with business as usual.  Once Google has processed through the request, there should be no further negative impact from that particular link.  Of course, it is still important to keep track of your back links to ensure there aren’t any additional low quality links being directed toward your site.

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