Prevent a link from passing a PR

best way to do it?

[Nick0r]

OK so here's my situation.

On my site I link to affiliate programs, at the moment I do it through redirect files. a.php b.php c.php each one linking to a different affiliate program. Now I was thinking, all of those redirect pages are being passed PR which could be better used on content pages. Is there a way I can link to these to prevent passing PR? Should I just use nofollow or is there a better way?

[Wizard]

You can use one from the following:

- use rel=nofollow
- use javascript onclick link
- put the page in non-crawlable frame
- print the link with javascript
- make local link in href and change it with js

or other. It depends on your site which one to choose, but all should work IMHO.

[hunderdown]

I would not use the rel=nofollow tag. That's not what it should be used for, if you read the documentation at Google, and it's possible that at some point in the future sites that don't use it properly could be penalized.

[larryhatch]

Are you sure that "redirect files. a.php b.php c.php" pass PR? I thought there was some
debate about that. -Larry

[Broadway]

From my reading here on WW, I think the following HTML creates a link (that somehow passes through Google.com) and does not pass PR.

<A HREF="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.refer_to_site.com"></A>

[Reid]

robots.txt

user-agent: googlebot
disallow: /a.php
disallow: /b.php
disallow: /c.php

or if you have no .php files other than the tracking scripts

user-agent: googlebot
disallow: /*.php

[indigojo]

send your link through TinyURL

[Wizard]

I would not use the rel=nofollow tag. That's not what it should be used for

I agree, it's better to be careful with this method.

But all methods preventing from passing the PR are attempts to manipulate Google, so theoretically they could be penalized.

The only hope they won't be, is to make it looking legitimate.

[rocco]

that is the last thing you should worry about. btw a lot of solid sites will not link to you due to such a practice, this will cost you much more pr.

[StuffOfInterest]

It's a shame that Google (and other engines) aren't doing more with the rel="nofollow" tag. I'd like to use it to keep the spider from following off of high-content portion of my site to the low-content (placeholder) pages. These pages already have robots-noindex tags but the spider has to go there to find out. Ideally, this or another tag should cause Google to ignore a link all together or treat it as normal, unlinked text.

No, in this case robots.txt won't work being that the low-content and high-content areas are in the same base tree.

[tata668]

What do you think about the Webmasterworld redirect trick?:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[charlier]

How about putting the links on their own low PR page and displaying that page in an IFRAME on the page where you have them now. That way they would only pass PR from the framed page and you would only have one link to that page.

[Reid]

No, in this case robots.txt won't work being that the low-content and high-content areas are in the same base tree.

You can specify single URL's in robots.txt or use a wildcard as long as it doesn't encompass real pages (pages you want crawled).

We are talking about affiliate redirect tracking scripts here right? Why would anybody want those indexed anyway?
Not indexed = not passing PR

[frontpage]

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

[steveb]

I'm not clear on what you are saying, but "Not indexed = not passing PR" is false. Google will assign PR to pages, or links, that aren't indexed. PR doesn't care at all about indexed. It only cares about finding the href in the html.

If however you meant that any links on a page not indexed don't pass PR, then yess because Google never saw any hrefs in the html.

[Reid]

mysite.com/widgets.html linksto mysite.com/clicka.php redirects to affiliate.com

widgets.html passes PR to clicka but clicka is disallowed. PR stays on site.

[fischermx]

Wow, hang there, this is terrible wrong :

[webmasterworld.com...]

[google.com...]

Both works without checking the referals!
That's mean that everybody can use both google or webmasterworld to believe their visting a resource in there, but being send to other place like :

[google.com...]

Add to this, some location bar bugs that can make you display a wrong site and you can make a user believe google or webmasterworld is hosting porn!

See what I mean?
Or am I missing something?

[steveb]

"mysite.com/widgets.html linksto mysite.com/clicka.php redirects to affiliate.com
widgets.html passes PR to clicka but clicka is disallowed. PR stays on site."

There is no such concept. PR is assigned to mysite.com/clicka.php
The PR is thrown away to a URL that can't do anything with it. It doesn't "stay on the site" in any practical way.

[fischermx]

mysite.com/widgets.html linksto mysite.com/clicka.php redirects to affiliate.com
widgets.html passes PR to clicka but clicka is disallowed. PR stays on site.

Why I feel like you are insinuating that outbound links will actually lower your own page PR?
If that were the case, DMOZ and Yahoo directory would be owing PR to google with such amount of links ...
Again, am I missing something?
Does this happen?

[steveb]

A page gives PR to pages it links to. You should do a search for PR basics to get a better idea about it.

[fischermx]

"A page gives PR to pages it links to"

Yes, sure it does.
But does it take your PR to give away, thefore decreasing yours!?!?

Does outbound links decrease your own PR!?!?

[nuevojefe]

no.

[fischermx]

Nuevojefe :

So, what's the problem with this people trying to don't make real links?
What do they lose?

[dopecoder]

yes, links from your site reduce your pr.

just the way, having more links to ur site increases ur pr, giving away links reduces it.

[Jim Westergren]

yes, links from your site reduce your pr.

just the way, having more links to ur site increases ur pr, giving away links reduces it.

Here I think the wording is not correct.

This is my understanding, correct me if I am wrong:

It is not like you reduce your PR by having external links (except you exceed 200 per page our something and get classified as a link farm) it is about how the PR gets distributed on the pages.

Lets say you have 500 IBLs and and this gave you a PR 5 of your index page and then this is being redistributed to all your internal and external links on your page on and on to the deepest place on your site.

I read in some article that a certain percent get distributed evenly on all the internal as well as external links.

I am using the rel=nofollow tag and in the last PR update all my new 4 sites that are linking to each other got PR 3/4 from PR 0. The pages I had the rel=nofollow still has PR 0 today.

Let's say you have a site and you have a copyright link or a TOS on the end of each page. In those kind of cases I would use the rel=nofollow or other means to not give that link a share of the PR distribution on each and every one of the webpages.

I hope that this rel=nofollow tag won't get any black hat side effect and can develop nicely. It would be less work for the overburden Googlebot and webmasters could put priorities on their links and pages.

But, how do you know your link partner does not put this tag on your link? You have to trust the webmaster and perhaps a new era of link marketing would begin and the spammy style would cease.

Anyway, the last was just some speculation.

[Reid]

Lets say you have 100 affiliate outbound links.

click.cgi?id=1 2 - 3 upto 100

disallowing one file (click.cgi) effectively disallows 100 outbound links.
does google count that as 1 link or 100 links?

say a page PR4 has 50 outbound links, how much PR would be going to those 50 links?

From my site I have Home and 5 level2 pages which go to different 'sections' of the site.
2 'sections' are in their own directory while the other 3 are in the root.
There is a lot of internal crosslinks but those 5 pages are definitely the main pages and are linked to from every page.
The ones within their own folders have the same PR as home but the ones in the root are 1 PR below, the rest of the site is less than that.
So google has identified those pages as 'more important' but not as important as the ones having a seperate folder.
There is more to PR distribution than just links.

[steveb]

"disallowing one file (click.cgi) effectively disallows 100 outbound links"

No, it does nothing at all in terms of PR.

"There is more to PR distribution than just links."

Nope, except Google may have a policy about not awarding full PR to a parent page of a domain for two updates, but that is different.

[egomaniac]

> Is there a way I can link to these to prevent passing PR?

Yes.

1) Use a external javascript file: e.g. affiliate1.js

2) Use a cgi redirect.

Neither of these will pass PR.

[Jim Westergren]

So google has identified those pages as 'more important' but not as important as the ones having a seperate folder. There is more to PR distribution than just links.

You loose PR when going to another directory. That's why you are supposed to have all webbpages on the root - except if it is another web site perhaps.

[Jim Westergren]

say a page PR4 has 50 outbound links, how much PR would be going to those 50 links?

Here is an extract from an article:

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The original* PageRank formula: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

For math wizards: PR(x) is the PageRank of x, C(x) is the number of outbound links on a page x, d is a damping factor set between 0 and 1 and is controlled by Google.

For the rest of us: Your sites PageRank is almost completely dependent upon links to your site, backward or reverse links, reduced, to some degree, by the total number of links to other sites on that page. A link to your site will have the highest amount of impact on your PageRank if:

1) The page linking to yours has a high PageRank. 2) The total number of links on that page is low, ideally, just the one link to your site. A site with a high PageRank and a large number of outbound links can nullify the impact on your PageRank.
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