Unfortunately, that article seems to be repeating a longstanding myth about PageRank, the myth of "PageRank leakage" or "
PR bleed".
Quote:
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The other place you might want to consider using the nofollow tag is when linking to outsides sites in general. The reason that a link from another site boosts your own PR is because when that site links to you, some its PR gets passed on to you. So if you’re linking out to another site, you might choose to hoard your PR all to yourself.
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When you link out to another page, it's true that you pass along a certain amount of the PageRank your own page has to that other page. This follows roughly the following formula:
{PR of page containing outgoing link} * WF / {total # outgoing links on your page}
where WF = "weighting factor", usually assumed to about .85, and "total # outgoing links" includes internal links and (now) nofollow links.
What's not true is the assumption that the page containing that outgoing link loses any of its own
PR: It doesn't.
Additionally, even if it
were true, now that Google has clarified its policy on nofollow links, to suggest that ALL outgoing links to other sites should be nofollowed makes no sense at all to me. If you do that, not only is your outgoing link going to be of no benefit to the receiving page, it's not going to be provide any benefit to you either.
Finally, nofollowing links to sites you endorse or sites you think will be useful to your visitors defeats the whole purpose of linking. The point is to say to your visitors, including Google, that you think the page at the end of your link is a worthwhile one - even if it is a paid link. If you don't believe that, don't link to it. If you do believe it, why on earth would you want to nofollow the link?
Frankly, I'm at the point where I'm fed up with Google's flip-flop on nofollow and where I'm pretty much not using the nofollow tag anywhere.
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