Mark Birbeck wrote:

> As I keep saying, all that is on the table here is a way for Google to stop
> crawling -- it's Google that doesn't endorse the link, not me.

Here is a perfect example of the misunderstanding that poorly-chosen syntax
can cause. rel="nofollow" has *nothing* to do with an instruction to "not
follow" the link, as you can see by a careful reading of the Technorati spec
draft. [1]

Yes, it's just a string. We can assign any arbitrary meaning to it. But
assigning the semantics of red to the string "green" is just going to cause
confusion.

Take a look through this thread -- see how many people think "nofollow" means
"don't follow". Even the original post from Google's blog fails to make a
clear distinction. [2] And this is a relatively well-informed and spec-aware
segment of the web authoring population.

If the search engine / blogging groups agree that adding a rel value is the
best approach, they should choose syntax that reflects the appropriate and
*intended* semantics. Lachlan's suggestion of "unendorsed" to me seems the
most reasonable so far. [3]

~fantasai

[1] http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/RelNoFollow 
[2] http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html 
      particularly "Should I put rel="nofollow" on the link to my comments page?"
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0057.html 

Discussion thread:
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/thread.html#37 


~fantasai