View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools

A few days ago I posted a feature request for Google Webmaster Tools to provide some nofollow information on external links. More or less right after I posted the request, I started putting together my own Greasemonkey script to provide the functionality I was seeking. When I was nearly complete with my Greasemonkey script, I revisited my post in Google Groups and saw that someone mentioned a Firefox addon that provides PageRank and nofollow status for external links in Google Webmaster Tools. The Firefox addon does exactly what I was looking for plus it also provides PageRank information.

Rather than let my hard work go to waste, I figured I would go ahead and post my Greasemonkey script here. I’m not crazy about how the Yoast script has the information displayed. I prefer the way I simply added a column without changing the “look and feel” of the page. I will probably add PageRank functionality to it when I find the time. I’ll just add another column that has the linking site PageRank, once again to preserve the look and feel of Google Webmaster Tools. I’ll either have to find a service with an API for PageRank or find a nice PageRank checking site to scrape (I’m open to suggestions if you have any).

My script does have one feature that the Yoast script does not have. By default it will remove rows that are either nofollow or where a link to the page was not found. That way you will only see links that can be verified to be contributing towards your PageRank. You can turn this feature on or off in the Greasemonkey User Script Commands menu. To disable the features, just click the Cancel button on the popups you get on the menu commands. To (re)enable them, just click OK on the popups. I was too lazy to make a better interface for enabling/disabling the row removal feature, but what I have works (and does so with very little code). My script also displays a “Loading…” message for each row, although I’d hardly call that a feature.

Install the Script