How does Google treat crawling of redirected tracking links?

[woldie]

Hi everyone,

Just curious to know how Google crawls redirect links, like the one below?

domain.com/public/redirect.html?sitecode=p&pid=uk_home_test_middle_expand_test_20120323&URL=http://www.domain.com/site-folder/

As you can tell the sitecode variable is passed to the script and then executed with the JS.

The thing is that we use this type link on the home page and as you know this holds the most equity and authority so I want make sure that we do not miss out.

Essentially it just tracks a click. Yes I know there is an easier solution, but I am trying to persuade them to do the preferred method below:

www.domain.com/uk/site-folder/pid=uk_home_test_middle_expand_test2_20120323

Just a case of adding the canonical, which I have already done

Thanks :-)

[tedster]

It's really up to your instructions. If you don't use a canonical link, you invite duplicate problems. Google tries to figure out that kind of thing but there are no guarantees.

Likewise if you use query strings, or scripts that redirect and the like, but allow those scripts to be crawled... then all kinds of mayhem is possible. So using the canonical at a minimum is a good idea.

I'm surprised that your sample URL does not contain a "?". Is that a typo?

[topr8]

why don't you serve googlebot (and other bots) hard coded links to the pages

and for other visitors serve them links that go through the tracker.

[woldie]

Apologies in the delay :-)

Thanks guys for your replies.

@Tedster, I see what you mean and yes that is a typo, well spotted!

@topr8 - Ah yes, good idea, I think I will try that, cheers :-)