If that’s a problem, why not just not post those links?
As a personal point that’s purely my own opinion, having an option like that there will confuse a whole lot of users that don’t fully understand what that’s there for and what it does (and doesn’t do). On top of that everyone that I’ve seen that knows how and when to use a nofollow attribute the correct way knows more then enough HTML to add it themselves. There are plugins that can handle this, and with the very real chance of confusing a whole heap of less technical users, I wouldn’t like to see this as part of the core code. (again, that’s only my opinion)
Because sometimes you want to send people over to another site, but Google doesn’t want you sending linkjuice. As per Matt Cutts, Google is probably going to take action against guest posting sometime in 2014. That doesn’t mean it is a bad idea to guest post; it just means it is a bad idea of doing it to build links instead of introducing yourself to a new audience.
I just hate installing a plugin to do just one tiny thing. I have too many plugins slowing down my site as it is. The lower level something is implemented, the less impact it has on a site.
To cover your concern of confusing less technical users, possibly it could be labeled as “advanced” or with other disclaimer to only use it if you know what you are doing.
Like i said before, if you are worried about the links that you’re posting, you should think twice about posting those links. Google is smart enough to recognise most linking strategies (as shwon by the relatively recent influx of webmasters requesting “bad” links to their sites be taken down) but if you’re linking to something relevent then there’s no need to use a nofollow. It’s still only there to tell the search bots that you don’t want to be associated with that site, even though you’re supporting it by linking to it. That’s a huge contradiction, and that’s one of the things that Google’s trying to clear up.
I would be interested in hearing what any of the core devs have to say about this, but i thas bene discussed before. A quick search gave me these:
http://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/add-checkbox-for-nofollow-attribute-in-internal-linking-box
http://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/make-nofollow-attribute-switchable-for-comments
http://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/remove-nofollow-from-wordpress
That’s just a very quick search, but in those the answer always comes back to “plugin territory”.
But there are certain cases where Google has basically said to nofollow a link, but you want that link there anyway.
Matt Cutts acknowledged in a recent blog post that guest posting still has a place for generating traffic, but he doesn’t want it used for building links. John Mueller has gone on the record to say people should nofollow guest post links.
Likewise, you are supposed to nofollow affiliate links, because the purpose of the link is to make money, so they technically violate Google’s TOS if you allow them to be dofollow.
If you’re doing things like allowing guest posts and adding affiliate links then my other point comes into play – you should know enough about HTML to do it yourself and understand exactly what that attribute is for.
I do agree that there’s a need for nofollow in defined situations such as the ones that you’ve described. I just don’t personally think that it’s a good idea to add more complexity into the system now when it’s going to confuse the vast majority of users that don’t understand what it means.
