Google officially quashes PageRank passing

Webmaster are instructed to add a identifying tag to paid links

it is not up to google to instruct me to add tags to my links, especially when those tags will not be part of any HTML standard, and are thus going to make pages non-compliant.

Getting more and more like MS everyday

@Anon Coward

So ... don't add that particular Google-ian anchor attribute if you don't want to. No big deal. Your pages will validate without it, and the Big G will treat your site only a little differently from those who want to please Her. You'll still have Yahoo and MSN.

For those who don't yet know, the attribute Google wants us to add to any of our "paid links" (including unpaid-yet-potentially-beneficial-to-the-receiver outgoing links) is this: rel="nofollow", as in <a href="http://notmysite.com" rel="nofollow"...

This simple (and, granted, out-of-the-spec) use of the rel attribute won't hurt you in any way except that you'll get those links flagged in a strict HTML validator. Other search engines won't mind, and Google will reward you by not following those links and thanking you for your effort. Screen readers don't give a darn, and I can't find any application that objects to this, any more than they object to the hundreds of MS-specific tags and attributes that currently clutter up the web.

Google simply wants you to tell them not to associate that link with your page content. "Google: Don't follow this link with your spider." Simple. Don't use it, if you don't want to. Your paid links will still get the exposure and visitor clicks. Done deal.

And it's hardly MS-ian, as their mantra is more like, "Our way or screw you."

Google's money?

Google has about a dollar of my Adsense money. But one of my buddies is owed about $30. How many trillions of dollars does Google have on-account for Adsense advertisers that are under the $100 cheque-issue limit?

I'll post AC since there's been a multicoloured helicopter hovering around here recently.

Non-Google ads may harm pagerank

Of course, the reason the various high-profile sites got their Pagerank dropped was that they used a non-Google Adwords-alike that didn't use rel=nofollow. Be careful.

Doesn't make it non html-compliant

The tag in question, is really an attribute is (rel="nofollow")

The tag in question does not cause the HTML on your page to become invalid HTML, even according to the anal w3c verifier.

Would you prefer to continue the wild-west search atmosphere. Is it fair and quality to have folks buying their way into natural search?

I've seen Cutts speak in person many times, and he's been preaching this same idea for over 2 years.

@Damien

Adwords/Adsense links don't pass pagerank, they're called by javascript.