I have observed this for sometime, so I thought I would bring this to light and see if you have observed it too. Apparently nofollow directive is ignored by search engines including Google, despite their claims.

They still follow the links. I have found backwards links to site which were tagged with nofollow in Google, MSN and Yahoo. It made me to conclude that despite their claim nofollow may not have much impact. What I cannot verify is whether they actually stop the Google rank-bleeding despite actually following the links.

What is your experience?

BTW: I understand their rationale in ignoring the nofollow tag and at least fetching the linked resource as it increases the size of their database.