[obannon]

@blogvibrations, I was simply trying to make the same point Ed has made over and over for the challenge without going too deep into the mechanics and theories of indexing/ranking for folks with plenty to learn on their plates already.

That said, I know the stated positions by search engines however have done my own testing on this, including creating a deep directory page 3 months ago that I linked to from 22 pages on other sites I own, all with nofollow tags.

Those 22 nofollow links are the only links still that appear for the page and yet it is indexed by all 3 major SE's and has a G PR of 1 after the last update.

Based on what the SE's say the page should technically be hidden from indexing and ranking, and certainly shouldn't have any PR, but that's just not what I've found.

I've got several more test pages online right now too just to see if there was some strange blip in my original test or if the results can/will be duplicated. It's too early to make assessments on these pages yet though.

Still, the bottom line for me is that links bring bots and people to your site(s) and shouldn't be seen strictly for their SEO value, so I'll gladly take any honest link I can easily get whether it's nofollow or not...and especially from a Gov or Edu site.