I think you were wasting your time there. See this article by Matt Cutts. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
[quote=“addaminsane, post:16, topic:213567”]
Using nofollow tags always result in collateral damage to your ranking efforts.
[/quote]How? If you ar using the tags in accordance with guidelines issued by search engines, how can they damage your ranking efforts?
If the link is to a reputable site and you want your site to be associated with it, you don’t use nofollow. If the link is in some way dubious, or violates guidelines in some way, or is user-generated so you can’t vouch for it, then use nofollow to avoid your site being penalised. Simple. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
[quote=“addaminsane, post:17, topic:213567”]
One common tactic to control the collateral damage caused by nofollow tags is to use absolute positioning for any outbound linking that requires the logical use of a nofollow tag.
[/quote]Perhaps it is common; I can only say that I have never heard of this technique before. I find it hard to picture how it could work, especially now that responsive design and mobile-friendly sites are growing in importance. But the whole idea seems to me a red herring. I would need to see an actual Google source stating that nofollow links in the page body have an adverse affect on your site before I could be convinced that this is a legitimate technique. So far, everything I’ve read from Google states the opposite.