Google PageRank sculpting Less Effective Now?

Google’s revealed that the advanced SEO practice of PageRank sculpting will be far less effective as it’s changed the rules on nofollow.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of PageRank sculpting, here’s a brief explanation.

PageRank Sculpting involves the use of nofollow tags on links to control where the PageRank value flows within a website. So by using nofollow tag, PR can be channelized to the more important pages i.e. Home page & Service page.

Well Google’s SEO voice, Matt Cutts, has revealed that Google’s management of nofollow has changed – potentially rendering the practice of basic PageRank sculpting useless.

According to Cutts, Google will no longer allow webmasters to build up link juice and funnel it to certain pages. If nofollow is used on links, the other pages wont get a PR boost – instead they’ll just receive the same PR value they would have, if all the links were followed.

So alas – this could be the end of PR sculpting as we know it. Given the announcement was made during a Q&A session at a conference; webmasters will be waiting patiently for an official statement on the policy from Google.