Multiple Outgoing Links From Banners

Good or bad?

[jonnno]

We have a large website with rotating banner ads throughout the site. Some advertisers are complaining that Google sees them being linked by us hundreds of times (since there's a limited number of banners rotating across the whole website). They think it is detrimental to their rankings rather than helpful as a good outgoing link should be.

Is this true or false?

Cheers

[tedster]

I'd say it all depends on how your banner links are done technically. If they are paid links (as I assume) then Google asks that you either place a rel="nofollow" attribute in the anchor, or send clicks through a script. For many advertising banners, a scripted solution for tracking purposes is the most common.

If you use a straight html link, then more risk falls on you as a seller than than on your buyers, at least as I read Google's communication. Although most people around the web are talking about paid "text" links, the Google communications I've seen have just been about "paid links".

[jonnno]

If I do the rel=nofollow or send through a script does that mean that the advertiser then gets no benefit from our pagerank?

Most of our advertisers are doing it for the link/rank so how do I show a good outgoing link to them but not in a way that might upset the mighty Google?

For instance, could I put rel=nofollow on all pages except the front so that as banners pass across the most important page they do pass rank but not anywhere else on the site.

If its of any use we have 100k or so dynamic pages and 6 sets of double banners.

Cheers

[tedster]

Yes, according to Google that is what either solution will do. You can't protect against the potentially bad effects without eliminating the potentially good effects.

However, Google does not intend to allow paid advertising to transfer PR or any other backlink influence. Trying to get the PR to transfer through paid advertising is going against Google's current guidelines - so whatever you decide to do or not to do, be clear about that. It's a very widely discussed topic [webmasterworld.com] that we don't need to repeat in this thread.