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>> CUTTS: Robert Enriquez in Charlotte, North Carolina asks, "Does Google value its own
links for PR or link juice, Google Bookmarks, Google profiles, et cetera? The reason being
for the question Google links never appear in Google Webmaster Tools." I don't know about
whether they never appear in Google Webmaster Tools. I think I have had--like I think the
Google blog has me on the blog roll or something, so I've seen some links from Google. But,
in general, people hold Google to a very high standard. You know, if we have search results
that are not blocked by robots.txt, people find out, notice, and let us know, and, you
know, blog about it, and it drives a lot of attention. So, we try to be relatively careful.
You know, things like search result don't flow page rank within Google, most Google
properties, we try to make sure that they're not too spamable, and if we're worried that
something might be potentially abused, then often will use a nofollow attribute. And we
try to have a pretty new strategies. For example, I think Google Knol, most of the external
links started out as nofollow, but then over time as we learn which Knol authors were more
trustworthy, we lifted the nofollow on those Knol authors. So, certainly, we do sometimes
flow page rank, but we try to be relatively careful because we're mindful of the people
that do try to abuse it.