No follow, PHP redirect , robot - too much?

[cheesy snacks]

I run quite a large affiliate site with a number of banners/content on the homepage.

In order to stop these links from being followed by google I use a PHP redirect, plus a nofollow (on the PHP redirect) and additionally use my robots file to noindex the page with my PHP redirect list.

I am just wondering wether this could trigger/cause some form of over optimisation penalty?

[eltercerhombre]

I'm doing exactly the same and no problems found in the last 2 years.

In fact, I have 1st - 3rd rankings in Google for the best keywords in my niche.

So, IMHO, no, no it's not too much. Maybe we miss adding the x-robots-tag in the headers? :)

[internetheaven]

I use a PHP redirect and robots.txt out the redirect file ... and I've had nothing but problems with that site!

Maybe I should add the nofollow to each link ...

[cheesy snacks]

InternetHeaven, That is an interesting reply in that I do the same and my sites have slipped slightly. Would google see this as over optimisation/attempting to hide outgoing links? Have they become wise to this?

[eltercerhombre]

Cheesy: from my experience, at least not yet. Don't do it with every link, but affiliate links are OK nofollowed, IMO.

[g1smd]

What is a "PHP Redirect"?

PHP is a scripting language that can output HTTP headers and HTML pages.

What, exactly, does the PHP script send as output to the browser?

[internetheaven]

I use two different types of php outgoing link redirect:

1. Is to use a masked URl such as:

http://www.mysite.com/do/out.php?5578

where /out.php fetches the outgoing URl for entry 5578 from a database and returns:

Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com/outgoinglink/" );

2. Is to link out using something like:

http://www.mysite.com/do/out.php?visit=http://www.example.com/outgoinglink/

Then out.php extracts the outgoing link from itself using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and returns:

Header( "HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com/outgoinglink/" );

>>> I had a reason for making the second one use 302 instead of 301 but I can't for the life of me remember what that reason was ...

[edited by: tedster at 4:56 pm (utc) on Jan. 15, 2009]
[edit reason] de-link the examples [/edit]

[jimbeetle]

Would google see this as over optimisation/attempting to hide outgoing links? Have they become wise to this?

He, he. If they hadn't before, they are now. I'm sure Google has been aware of this since it first started being discussed on boards -- in Internet time -- many years ago.

[smallcompany]

hide outgoing links

Although true about hiding, do not forget the convenience of having links organized in a single file, being that JavaScript, PHP, or whatever.

Can you imagine running a site of 100+, or 500+ pages and having links hardcoded on each page? Who can maintain that? Nobody.

It's so easy to change the link in one single spot.

[g1smd]

The 302 redirects could be quite damaging to the sites that you link out to, unless you disallow the internal redirecting URL using robots.txt within your site. so that search engines do not spider those sites through your redirect.

See also: [webmasterworld.com...]

.

*** It's so easy to change the link in one single spot. ***

Another way is to define all the links via an array, and simply insert the right link in the right content by referring to it that way. That way, there's no redirect involved.

[eltercerhombre]

IMHO, disallowing in robots and then using a php redirect is not a problem. Well, not IMHO, is my experience.

But do not that for all or almost all your links. Link to relevant sites, that's important.

And I do not hardcode the links: those going to an affiliate site -when available- are nofollowed, redirected and robots'ed; if the link is not an affiliate one goes directly. But that's automatic.

To summarize: my experience says that disallow, redirect and nofollow is not a problem, but your site has to offer relevant links and content. But what I do is not for everyone maybe.

[smallcompany]

Another way is to define all the links via an array, and simply insert the right link in the right content by referring to it that way. That way, there's no redirect involved.

That sounds interesting to me - I always used term "redirect" to describe that particular action, but is it really a redirect if I say

script.php?link=link1

and code is something like if link=link1 then link=site.com and so on for X number of links.

Is this a redirect or an array?