Nofollow Question for JS Links

[uggur]

Hello,

I've question about rel="nofollow" tag for js links. For example, my links are like that:

<a href="javascript:void(0);" onClick="open_window('http://www.a.com/1.html','dene',370,250);return false;"></a>

And googlebot can thread to a.com/1.html but i want to don't follow it. I already blocked 1.html to robots.txt and put in meta noindex tag on this page. But i wonder about if i put rel="nofollow" tag like the following links, is there any problem? Because href tag has javascript:void(0);

For example:

<a href="javascript:void(0);" onClick="open_window('http://www.a.com/1.html','dene',370,250);return false;" rel="nofollow"></a>

Are there any best practice for this case?

Thank you.

[goodroi]

The Nofollow tag is used more by Google to identify untrusted or paid links.

Is your primary goal to keep 1.html out of the index or are you trying to manipulate pagerank?

[uggur]

Yes, 1.html would keep out of the index. But this question for curiosity because i already disallowed it from robots.txt and noindex tag. If i put nofollow on javascript:void or # links, is google thread al off them without any problem? Any practice for this?

[Robert Charlton]

i already disallowed it from robots.txt and noindex tag

Note that the robots.txt keeps Googlebot from spidering 1.html... which means that Google won't see the meta robots noindex tag. In that situation, if Google indexes any pages that link to 1.html, Google might return the url of 1.html in something like a site: search of the domain.

If you want to keep 1.html and references to it out of the index, my approach would be to use meta robots noindex and not to use a robots.txt exclusion. With the noindex visible to Googlebot, Google would spider the page but won't return any reference to the page in its index. Hard to say what they do with the information on the page... whether they use it to form any opinion about you... or just keep the noindex on record that the page isn't to be indexed.

Just putting rel="nofollow" on a link to 1.html is not an effective way to keep 1.html out of the index, as any other links to 1.html would allow the page to be found and indexed.

rel="nofollow" links are also black holes for PageRank, although it doesn't sound like PR is your issue.

Are you trying to keep the material out of the public eye, or keep it hidden from Google entirely?