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Last year webmasters began to see a turning point in how search engines assess the importance of websites although at the time very few really saw what the impact of these changes would be. I certainly didn't and I don't really think that many SEOs looked beyond the surface issues that these changes created.

Back then the webmaster community was introduced to the rel='nofollow' attribute and it was generally hinted that this was introduced to help combat search engine spam. People immediately saw that it would decrease the value of paid links and that idea was confirmed when it was announced that paid links definitely should include the attribute and it should also be included on any outgoing link to a site that we didn't 'trust'

At the time some of us saw it as yet another way Google had found to remove competition. The paid link industry was quite lucrative for many people and we thought that Google might have seen it as some competition for their paid links.

But it actually went much deeper than just paid links. You see, the algorithm that Google uses to rank sites is based on the paper that the Google founders wrote years ago. That paper outlined their basic idea of grading search results based on a site's link popularity. Put very simply that idea was that if a site had lots of incoming links that a search engine spider could follow then the site must be considered as being important.

The rel='no follow' changed all that and now there are many sites out on the Web that have that attribute appended to every link on every page - including internal links (something it was never intended to be used with). Wikipedia announced earlier this week that all it's outgoing links - not just some but ALL of them - would now have that 'no follow' attribute appended to them and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a trusted link anywhere.

So now, with that attribute in place, the whole idea of assessing the value of a site based on the links that point to it is becoming rather fuzzy around the edges. I haven't yet seen anything from Google that explains what sort of trust we need to put in a site before, in their view, we should not use that 'no follow' attribute when we link to the site.

Instead of making it plain it's left up to us to divine the true meaning of the 'no follow' attribute and, rather than get it wrong and suffer the consequences of linking to a 'bad' site, most webmasters are choosing not to put their trust in any site - not even their own.

Oh it's a crazy world out there! Now we have people who are so paranoid that they don't even trust their own internal pages. And don't think that this is something just being done by amateurs - I've seen that 'no follow' attribute being used on internal links on quite a few commercial sites that are maintained by professionals too.

So what do those people who need 'trusted' links but can't even trust themselves do?

Perhaps they can take heart from what a few SEO researchers are beginning to look at. While it's early days yet it may be that all the ruckus about getting heaps of incoming links is becoming a little out of date. It seems that a few people are finding that they can achieve good rankings for sites and pages with only a few incoming links.

And they are also suggesting that Google may have more trust in some of their older sites than they realised. If there is that trust in those sites then it's important to use those sites to feed links - and trust - to the new sites. As one researcher pointed out, what is Google to think of your new site if you don't even trust it enough to remove the 'no follow' attribute from the link you've just given it from one of your older sites.

So perhaps it's time to take a look at some of your older sites to see which ones that Google may actually trust. Assessing that trust isn't based on the page rank for that site so don't be fooled into thinking that just because you have a site with a PR of 4 then it must be trusted.

Instead, be prepared to run some tests and do a little experimentation of your own - you may be pleasantly surprised. Steve and I found that we may have a site that Google has some trust and it really did surprise us.

It would be nice if the whole idea of reducing the value of incoming links turns out to be true. The level to which some people will go just to get a few links on sites that give little real value - even long tail value - to those links is amazing and it's no wonder that the skills involved in search engine optimization and marketing are being laughed at by some influential commentators out there.