Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'd like to contain that leak. Websites who link to me will continue to get a clean link back in html that Google can see, and this is irrespective of what PR those sites have. But there are a lot of sites that I need to link to who wouldn't dream of linking back to me. I'd like to shield those outbound links somehow and improve the overall PR of this site's pages. I'm sure this has been covered before but can't seem to find it.
I obviously don't want to upset the big G because they do send me hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
Please help.
Also you could block the redirect script in your robots.txt file
Pardon my ignorance but what's a redirect script and what's an id parameter?
go.cgi?id=35 sounds good. Sounds like I install a cgi script in my cgi bin, allocate a number to each external URL and then whenever I want to link to an external site I link to go.cgi?id=xxx instead. Where would I find a cgi script like that?
I don't know if it's relevant but the site was done in Frontpage 2000.
I have a robots.txt file, and could setup that block. Good idea! Otherwise Google will just scroll through all the links I've got and the purpose will be defeated.
Sounds like I install a cgi script in my cgi bin, allocate a number to each external URL and then whenever I want to link to an external site I link to go.cgi?id=xxx instead
heres an example script: [ftls.org ]
...with others available by performing a search on [hotscripts.com ] for something like 'redirect'
HTH
(I did try the "redirect script" in a Google search but was getting SERPS of a different kind of redirect - redirects based on browser type etc)
When I go to a page that has a href to
/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?http://www.webmasterworld.com/
and click on the link the browser address bar shows
[mysite.com...]
but I get a HTTP 500 - Internal server error
Any other suggestions?
Should be set as 755 I think. Either that or the redirect file has some editable parameters in it which you have not set.
or they perform a redirect based on browser type. I can't seem to find anything that offers the option of my allocating numbers to external URLs and using the above example of go.cgi?id=35.
I did find one called redir.pl (similar to the ftls example above) on the watson-net.com site but it wants a cgi.pm module and a ctime.pl - something about standard parts of a perl library. Not something I suspect will work for me as I don't know what all that is :-(
Do I perhaps want to be looking for a "links script"?
What's chmod? I'm sorry, it doesn't appear like I know anything at all.
I do have other cgi scripts in the cgi-bin which do work (installed there by the e-commerce software) but I thought I just had to post the script in the cgi-bin. I've seen chmod mentioned elsewhere on webmasterworld and it sounds complicated.
More fundamentally, why are you convinced that the outbound links are losing you PR? While it is true that on any given page the PR will be divided among its links, your site isn't like a leaky bucket that will empty itself of PR if you don't plug the outside links. If you have a ton of links on every page that could be a problem, but it has been suggested that a good external link or two might actually help a page/site.
why are you convinced that the outbound links are losing you PR
I have an average of about 5-10 external links per page. Max is probably about 20. But because of the large number of pages I have the total outbound links are in the thousands. That has got to affect my PR. When I have 10 external links on a PR5 page and five internal links then those internal links would benefit if I "hid" the external ones. Not that PR is that important anyway, but it does help when asking for reciprocals. The higher your PR the more likely you'll get a webmaster to agree to exchanging links.
My site is in Frontpage on a Windows server.
It seems like I have set the editable parameters correctly. Tehre isn't really much to set.
Thanks for the tip on using ftp to see the permissions! There is indeed a Properties/CHMOD for the file. It's set to 777 and owner, group and public have Read, Write and Execute ticked.
If you need any help, PM me. I will do it for you. This is a minute's job to install this script.
You can also use some PHP based redirect scripts from hotscripts.
Nakulgoyal very kindly offered to help but after chatting with him via MSN and giving him a copy of the script to see if I had done something wrong he said that he'd have a look and get back. Also, that he'd email me a copy of a script that he knows works. But maybe he's busy... I've not heard from him again :-(
Can anyone help? Do you have a script that you are familiar with and that you could recommend? Thanks.
'SITE CHMOD 755 redirect.cgi': command not understood
Can anyone help? Do you have a script that you are familiar with and that you could recommend? Thanks.
anybody?
Although why on earth you would want to do that I don't know - especially if these sites are authoritative (and you say you really need to link to them).
This is not a PR leak, in fact, it's very good SEO to link to them.
TJ
PS: Actually it looks like google can follow JS links:-
[webmasterworld.com...]
Although why on earth you would want to do that I don't know - especially if these sites are authoritative (and you say you really need to link to them).
Some of them are better than others but I do have several thousand outbound links. All that I've read so far suggests that for a given PR 6 page that has 20 links to other pages in my site and 10 links to external pages ...those 20 pages would benefit more from the 10 external links being hidden/removed.
why not just do it with javascript
So I would appreciate if anyone has a redirect/exit type script they can recommend for easy of use.
All that I've read so far suggests that for a given PR 6 page that has 20 links to other pages in my site and 10 links to external pages ...those 20 pages would benefit more from the 10 external links being hidden/removed.
Better distribute the outgoing links over several pages. But external links are good, especially when they contain your keyword in the anchor-text. Having more pages is better since Google likes bigger sites. Adding pages regularly is good.
<?
$newlocation = $HTTP_GET_VARS["to"];
if ( $newlocation == '' )
{
$newlocation = 'www.yoursitehere.com';
}
print Header("Location: [$newlocation");...]
// or: print Header("HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently", true)
?>
You call the script by this url:
[yoursitehere.com...]
if i'm reading that correctly, its using the 301 for the "redirect" and letting the browser head off in the other direction?
>letting the browser head off in the other direction
Don't understand what you mean by this.
Not that PR is that important anyway, but it does help when asking for reciprocals. The higher your PR the more likely you'll get a webmaster to agree to exchanging links.
And if those trading links notice how you are cloaking the outbounds, will they then be likely to trade?
I am late to this discussion, I know. After many hours of reading viewpoints here at WW I must say I have come to agree with those that promote web design based on user needs, vs SE needs. In that sense I do not think I would bother to cloak an outbound link.
Yidaki - how does the PR compare between jump.php and the referring page? Does jump.php show in the SERPS with any regualarity? Or, does the 302 take care of that?
WBF
You call the script by this url:
[yoursitehere.com...]
And if those trading links notice how you are cloaking the outbounds, will they then be likely to trade
Everyone else, thanks for all your input. I did need a cgi or pl script but I guess there just isn't one around that's simple to set up :-(
But I have a lot of outbound links (several thousand) that are "losing" me PR.
I had in fact read your first post. Looks to me like the jury is still out on the subject of "losing" PR.
Perhaps with a site your size you can provide some definitive data on this question. Please post back the results on your PR after hiding all of these links.
WBF
Google keeps track of PR entirely on a URL basis. The domain name or site does not matter (except that many links tend to be intrasite).
So, instead of transferring your PR to an external site, you now transfer it to yoursite.com/redirect.cgi?xxxxx . Either way, you are transfering PR.
If you want to avoid this, you need to make sure that Google doesn't see the link in the first place. The simplest way is to use JavaScript to construct the link (of course, this will make those links only work for JS enabled browsers).
BTW, you should know that having some quality outbound links which actually increase your Google rankings, as you willbe considered a "hub."
Perhaps having a lot of outbound links gets you recognised as a hub and other sites start linking to you and boosting your PR. That's the only way I can see of increasing your PR by having outgoing links.
In the interim, where do you draw the line? Do you acquire PR purely for having a lot of outbound links? That does not seem to be the case.
If I collected an ODP size number of links and organised them as a new site would it go straight to a PR of 9/10? If not then outgoing links do not contribute to PR.
The point about potentially transferring PR to redirect.cgi - which is robots.txt excluded - is a cause for concern.
