Have you been to ESPN.com lately? Have you browsed around their site with your favorite nofollow attribute link indicator turned on? well I have and I was a little shocked. I mean I know all about SEO’s efforts to sculpt PR for Google and channel link juice throughout important pages on their site, but look at their Horse Racing Triple Crown page. Here are a few screen shots (click for bigger image) with the links that have the nofollow attribute highlighted in PINK.
Screen Shot 1 – All Navigation Blocked
Screen Shot 2 – Content Links Blocked
Very PINK isn’t it? Why are they doing this. Why would add the nofollow to every link on this page? Are they trying to promote this page more actively since this is the middle of horse racing season? I check other pages on ESPN, but didn’t see anything similar. Is this a mess up? Who knows, but it doesn’t look very smart to me.