TeamPlayer, what context was this quote taken from? I cannot see any SEO benefits from adding nofollow to those pages but perhaps, it one know more about the context the quote was taken from, it may be possible to guess why the author things its a good idea to add not follow to such pages.

Temi, it was sent to me as part of a `tips` newsletter by a search engine I`m with. It was just trying to advise members on possible improvements to help with SEO.

Thanks for that info, I could be wrong but I cannot see how doing that would improve SEO ranking.

Maybe I can see the logic behind it.

With a lot of these sorts of pages, there is a legal requirement (particularly for legal or governmental sites) to write them in a certain way. Often there's little room for manouver for what you can and can't say. Less scrupulous designers copy and paste them from other sites, changing the names. This can be seen as duplicate content, so you could be hit from it.

That's my interpretation of it, anyway.

Originally Posted by rhyswynne

Maybe I can see the logic behind it.

With a lot of these sorts of pages, there is a legal requirement (particularly for legal or governmental sites) to write them in a certain way. Often there's little room for manouver for what you can and can't say. Less scrupulous designers copy and paste them from other sites, changing the names. This can be seen as duplicate content, so you could be hit from it.

That's my interpretation of it, anyway.

Interesting theory, one I hadn`t thought of. I suppose by necessity the basic format of such kinds of pages must be fairly similar. I can`t recall seeing many, if any, legal type pages come up in Search Engine results. That being the case, a `nofollow` can`t do any harm, can it?