Detecting "nofollow" backlinks in a blog or forum

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Detecting "nofollow" backlinks in a blog or forum

mooli7dm

6:12 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Well, one would try to create backlinks by posting on blogs and forums that allow urls without a 'nofollow' on posts and replies. So I am trying to find out if a given blog has nofollow on or not. If I view the source of the page, I do see comments from posters on that blog that have a valid url without any nofollow tags, but the nofollow could be hiding in the css. The only way I thought I could find out if the backlinks from that blog are 'follow' or not is by checking the 'link:' search in google for one of the poster's url. Well, it doesn't show up on google and I understand that the 'link:' is not very reliable. Does anyone know of a better way to do this?

tedster

6:18 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

You can use "View Source" to see directly into the code. Or there are many add-ons for Firefox that will highlight nofollowed links on your screen in a color you choose.

Note that the nofollow attribute is not CSS - it's an HTML attribute.

mooli7dm

6:29 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Tedster, thanks for your quick reply. As I mentioned, I did view the source of the page - did not find any 'nofollow's on it, but I do believe that you could hide the nofollow in the css.

BradleyT

6:47 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

It is an attribute/value applied to the anchor tag - it cannot be hidden.

Get one of the firefox addons like Tedster mentioned to see for yourself. I prefer yellow highlighter color myself.

[edited by: BradleyT at 6:48 pm (utc) on Jan. 13, 2009]

jimbeetle

6:52 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Nope, as Tedster stated, as an HTML attribute, nofollow cannot be hidden in the CSS. There might be other ways of hiding a nofollow, but would be beyond the capacity of most blog owners.

Pico_Train

7:51 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Just an add-on, check the <head> for meta robots noindex,nofollow as well.

With regards to the firefox add-on, is the icon something you might squish by mistake because you are afraid of insects?

caribguy

8:03 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

The nofollow addon can actually be gamed by using something like this once the page has loaded:

function doChange(className) {
 elements = getElementsByClass(className)
 for (i=0; i < elements.length; i++) {
 m = elements[i].getAttributeNode("rel");
 n = elements[i].removeAttributeNode(m);
 }

Better to look at the source when in doubt...

tedster

8:09 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

check the <head> for meta robots noindex,nofollow

Yes, and many of the Firefox add-ons will highlight every link if there's a robots meta. As with much of web technology, there certainly are possible games, including cloaking. But as jimbeetle, most blog owners are it's going to be doing anything like that.

londrum

8:23 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

you can put nofollow into a php header as well, so it might not show in the HTML at all.

BradleyT

10:00 pm on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

With regards to the firefox add-on, is the icon something you might squish by mistake because you are afraid of insects?

Negative....

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:15 pm (utc) on Jan. 13, 2009]