Verifying exchange links are good

Identifying links hidden from spiders

[handfordr]

Anyone know a simple way of checking that somebody who has exchanged a link with you hasn't hidden it in some way so it is not recognised by the spiders.

[moishe]

First make sure the page they are placing your link on has been indexed by Google by searching for the full url of the link page, IE: [example.com...]

As long as it is found in Google then you know they are not blocking the page from indexing, then look at the source of the page and make sure they do not have their robots meta tag set to nofollow and that the code used for links on the page looks clean. I also look other links on the page and do a backlink check on those using Yahoo. Most likely if the other links on the page are showing the site in question as a backlink then you are ok.

[ryan26]

a) Check their robots.txt or robots META tag for that page to ensure that they are allowing full access to index.

b) Look for redirect URLs, Javascript link script or any other type of query string in the anchor to ensure that you are getting a clean link that will pass PR & anchor pop. The link should point to yourdomain.com as opposed to theirdomain.com/links.php?partner=3 if you want to fully benefit from the link.

c) Anyone else?

[edited by: martinibuster at 11:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2004]

[PatrickDeese]

It might be faster to use the Google toolbar to see if the page is cached (instead of checking for the URL in Google) - if it has been blocked by robots.txt or a metatag, it won't be cached.

[handfordr]

Fine - but what about where the pages have perfectly good Google PR's but use methods like using javascript with code like document.write 'http://wwww.site.com' within the pages or php/asp code for similar purposes to hide url's from the spider but all seems Ok with subsequently generated page

[growingdigital]

View the source on the cached page in Google. Additionally, you may want to consider using a spider simulator to see the results.

[handfordr]

Forgive my ignorance - what is a spider simulator and where can I get one?

[rj87uk]

[searchengineworld.com ]

RJ