Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The strange thing is, they are new to this industry and up till a week ago were ranking somewhere in the 100's. Now, they rank 2 places under us for the keyphrase that was used in the title of the article page! They don't rank well for any other keyphrases in our industry. With all the Google spamming out there could mentioning the URL and NOT linking be a way for Google to judge a true "vote"?
I can't find another reason for the ranking jump because everyone else in the top 30 or so has thousands of backlinks, pagerank of 4-8 and has been going for 2-7 years. Plus, the fact that they are only ranking for that one phrase.
You may now tell me why that is a really daft concept ... ;)
Title + found url + YOUR trust rating = quality link... or in this case "relationship".
You'd have to weigh in several factors too though. How old is YOUR site, incoming links, links to that exact page you're referring too, etc. Could be a lot of things, but I think it's mostly 'trust' and 'relevance'.
Should also mention - How long has it had this position? If for a short time, then we could expect it to drop rather quickly.
Where's my Fark 'follow up' tag? ;)
[edited by: MrStitch at 9:08 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2008]
Google stated many years ago that can identfy and can crawl un linked URL's, so in the era of trust rank it is conceivable that these are factored into the Algo.
IMO it is 'Natural' for sites to have unlinked urls pointing to them.
Why not remove their URL from your page and see what happens in the serp's?
I'd be curious to see what happens with a nofollow added? If the one unlinked url brought them up so high, can they get dropped back down again with a nofollow?
How can you add a nofollow attribute to an unlinked url?
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> ?
This is the nofollow meta tag, which you put on the page you don't want indexed.
In this case, would you sneak this onto the other company's ranking page in the middle of night, or would you put it on the page containing your article with the unlinked url, so Google would removed it (ie, your article with the url) from the index? ;)
The nofollow attribute is included within the code of an href link. Since there is no href link here, where would you put it?
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:07 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2008]
Maybe I have mis-understood, but I thought I can either NoFollow the entire page with
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">,
or nofollow an particular url with the attribute.
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">
And I'd place it on the page with the unlink URL so that when google hits the page, see's the meta tag and ignores the link (as well as others on that page which is the downfall)
(as well as others on that page which is the downfall)
Yes, that's precisely my point... using the meta robots nofollow element would remove the entire page... "your article with the url." It doesn't just remove links... it removes the entire page from the index.
[mattcutts.com...]
Both talk about the purpose of the robot meta tag in relation to noindex and nofollow.
So, internetheaven, if your nervous about the site you unlinked to getting to close to you in serps, maybe think about nofollowing that whole article page, which means other links on that page won't get followed from that page, but if pointed to from other pages, will still get followed as normal, or ask them to put a noindex tag at the top of their page. :)
edited by: youfoundjake, 2:02
The rel="nofollow" attribute in an anchor tag means "this link [only] on this page [only] is not a vote - don't send any link juice." And you know what? The only times I've ever typed that attribute have been in forums, emails and Powerpoints. I hate the thing and always have, with the possible exception of the original idea for blgo comments. Put it back in the box already! But of course, it looks like it's here to stay so I will shut up.
Now about the opening question - I've seen unlinked urls apparently help rankings. In particular, a client got a fat mention of their url in the NYTimes, but it was unlinked. Rankings jumped within a few days, but I always assumed it was because the mention stimulated others to link to their service, which really is an exclusive one-of-a-kind with decent demand, once people learn about it.
Now I'm wondering - maybe there is some part of the algo that values unlinked mentions of a url. We already know that Google will attempt to spider such urls if they haven't already, so somewhere in that vast data farm the url is being stored. And it would make a kind of sense for Google to do this, especially in measuring "burstiness" for a new domain.
Now that the topic is on the table, I have this little itch in the back of my brain that just maybe I read something about this in the piles of verbiage I sort through reading Google patents. If I locate a reference, I'll post it later.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm actually going to disagree with a moderator
youfoundjake - Moderators are all too human.
...the purpose of the robot meta tag in relation to noindex and nofollow
In the case of this moderator, there was some jumping ahead to the conclusion, and thus some mistyping in answering the wrong question. Since there was no link on the page to which nofollow could be applied, I'd assumed that you must have been talking about blocking the entire page, using this form of the robots meta tag (where nofollow is commonly but not always associated with noindex)....
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
I was discussing the effects of noindex. Sorry for the extra confusion.
i'd be curious to see what happens with a nofollow added?I had a brainburp at that time and was actually referring to the unlinked url, but I think I recovered nice and gracefully with the meta follow up)
youfoundjake,
..or ask them to put a noindex tag at the top of their page.
