The problem is a lot of folks think that PageRank has far more influence on SERP ranking than it actually does. You would not see that big of shift positively or negatively when you consider that the pages that people nofollow for the purpose of sculpting PageRank usually are not important pages. Going from “almost no influence” to “no influence” would barely be noticeable.
The truth, as it has been conveyed by Cutts, is that you will see only slight, perhaps unnoticeable, differences. And while it may have had a slightly positive effect in the past, it was changed more than a year ago and it will only result in a slightly negative result today.
Google changed its algorithm long before most folks began actively using PR sculpting. They would have never seen any effect from a change because there has been no change since they began.
It’s hard to accept that something you have put so much time and effort in, convinced that it was helping, was actually not helping. The nature of dogma is that it persists. This just seems to be SEO dogma.
