(G)Bot follows Alternate PSA Ads

Why?

[jim_w]

I could not find anything on this, so here it goes.

I have alternate ads for my adsense to /amazon_ad_1.html to use instead of PSA ads. (G)Bot follows their own javascript to that file. There are no links to it other than in the adsense ads.

Doesn’t (G) have enough common sense to recognize their own script and NOT follow it?

I know add it to the robots.txt.

Does anyone know if this will harm our position in ANY search engine?

crawler11.googlebot.com Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

[loanuniverse]

I think the only effect is that your default ad will have PR. Unless you believe the "PR leak" theory, and then one could say that the effect is only minimal.

[jim_w]

And between my luck and (G), more than the rest of my pages no doubt ;-))

I hate when that happens. I guess I'll have to put in metas, edit robots.txt, put in a title, description, etc. etc. etc. (sigh) I'm more concern with me leaking than the PR.

I'll have to check that. If it does by chance have any real PR value, well, look what we discovered!

[loanuniverse]

Well, if it makes you feel any better my default has a PR of 5 :) And I guess that would be correct since the pages that are in the navigation bar get 5 PR and the ones linked from the sitemaps or under are PR4.

I would not worry about it Jim.

[jim_w]

I can see it now index.html hits go to zero, but my Amazon account overflows due to it showing in the SERPs :-)

Well of course you would not worry about it, you probably have better luck than I. Just call me Mr. Murphy, (but ya don't gots to call me Johnston)

[RichD]

That is strange. Page shows with PR and a search for "site:{domain} inurl:{something unique}" shows the page in the serps. No title or description on mine, but there isn't a title or any text on the page.

I guess it could just be down to Google seeing any url in a page as a link.

[jomaxx]

Yes, even if it's in Javascript code, Google will recognize a URL and follow it. Googlebot has done this for years. Of course there are the standard ways to prevent any page from being indexed.

[jim_w]

Actually I have 4 different informational pop-ups that use javascript, and (G) has never indexed them. They have been online for 4 years. These pop-ups show graphics that defines the content on t hat page.

Strange that they get the non-pop-ups and not the pop-ups.

[jomaxx]

I believe the URL must be in fully-delimited format, beginning "http://", in order for Google to recognize it.

[danny]

I'm using Amazon results as alternate ads, and they're doing quite nicely in search results. It's kind of frustrating that they're optimized to look good in an iframe, not as a stand-alone page, but I'm thinking of changing the styling depending on the presence of an external referer.

[jim_w]

jomaxx

My images are, I fetch them with the URL not the path name. I would have thought that since the pop-ups is html code that displays the image, (I didn't say that before), and I use the entire URL to fetch the image, that it could end up in the SERPs. List time I checked, they were not in the index. But that was the last time I checked. Heck, they may be now.

[PatrickDeese]

I usually put a link to my home page and my site map on my alternate ads:
you know:

<amazon>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<home>
<sitemap>

.... in case a user accidentally lands there ;)

[jim_w]

That's a good idea.

[jomaxx]

Jim, I am not completely sure what you are describing, but if the popups are simply images, images will never end up in the Google index.

They could end up in Google Images I suppose, but in my experience that database only contains a tiny proportion of all the graphics on the Net.

[jim_w]

jomaxx

No, it's not just an image. It's html with a img src= to bring up the image. But the html consists of not much more than that. You know, a close window form button, etc.