In all cases I use the latter tag so the link opens in a new window. That way my visitor can surf around the other site and I’ll still be there when they eventually close that window.

And it’s the only tag I use if the source site is a blog, but if it’s an online newspaper article (or something of that caliber) I sometimes will add the ‘nofollow’ tag too. That way it’s attributed and viewable by my visitors, but it doesn’t get any “Google juice”. :)

I had a problem last year where I published a bunch of articles on my niche site, and on the next Google update those very same articles I linked to popped up ahead of my website in the rankings for my primary keyword! Since online newspaper sites already have a high PR, I don’t want to give them any extra help by linking to them in any way that helps their rankings for my KW.

..any ethical thoughts about the ‘nofollow’ tag..?

As reading my blogs is time consuming and I don’t read every blog every day, you will sometimes find me posting things way after you and really maybe in the same pattern as you – but this does not mean I am not giving credit but just that persons with an interest in the same topic tend to blog about the same things.

Also, if a topic comes up on several blogs, I sometimes blog this very ‘late’ – which means some of the blogs I am reading got me so convinced that I want to blog about that too – who is credit to give to? Every instance that blogged about it which I read those days? Every blogger which did not blog about it and got me therefor influenced to do it?

In such cases I do credit the last one, which got me to blogging about it. And sometimes I blog about something when I read the actual site – because other bloggers before have referred to that site. How to handle such? Go back through all of my 900 blogs and try to come up with the ones which influenced me to post about it?

You can’t. So my position in crediting is: You get a credit if I got it exclusivly via you and you added some value to it. If I have read this on dozens of blogs, and I read the original blog also, plus I would have blogged about it anyway when reading the original source I do not ‘credit’ anyone either.

But on the other side, there are _of course_ people who don’t credit you. I know which blogs I am reading and which authors do not read my pattern of blogs. And if they come up with exactly the same postings and often some of my sentences, this is just poor.

And giving credit to the author of the not giving credit blogger: Of being not nice.