Want to understand SEO impact of rel="noreferrer noopener" tag

[Vims]

Hi friends,

I just came across this tag - rel="noreferrer noopener", can somebody please explain this? Is it relevant to nofollow or something else? Will it pass credit or not?

[skaterpunk]

There are plenty of clear and detailed explanations written about "noreferrer noopener" when doing a search for the terms.

[No5needinput]

There are plenty of clear and detailed explanations written about "noreferrer noopener" when doing a search for the terms.

Good way to welcome a new member - and make the forum obsolete - if people are told to search elsewhere... :-)

[lammert]

First of all Welcome to WebmasterWorld Vims!

The two tags you mentioned are mainly used on the browser side, not the search engine side. They trigger certain security features in the browser which block JavaScript execution from one tab in another. They trigger site isolation features that cause a tab or window which is opened with target="_blank" to be run in a completely isolated process. This prevents some XSS attacks and may also speed up one of the pages if the other page is using heavy JavaScript. Normally browser tabs share the same process space but with the noopener/noreferrer tags they run in different processes and therefore probably on different cores on a multi-core CPU.

noopener and noreferrer do almost the same, but noreferrer also prevents the referer header from being sent when a URL is opened in a new tab or window. This is an extra security measure although it may break some sites which are relying on the referer URL, most notably affiliate sites may lose commission if the opened URL doesn't know the referrer.

[lucy24]

if people are told to search elsewhere

Yes, let's leave that for That Other Forum, where all questions are answered with a huffy “This question was answered in {thread} and {other thread} and {oh, and this one}” :)

I honestly don’t remember even having heard of these tags before, so I checked caniuse dot com:

https://caniuse.com/#search=noreferrer
https://caniuse.com/#search=noopener

As always, beware of MSIE. And fwiw, caniuse says of “noopener”

This feature is non-standard and should not be used without careful consideration.

And watch out! It’s spelled noreferrer. (That is, ahem, it's spelled the way it's supposed to be spelled, not the way the header is spelled.)

[tangor]

New ones for me as well. Reading a little further it appears these are NOT suggested for regular use.

[Angelbma]

"Noreferrer" attribute:- This feature stop passing the referral information to the browser, but the link to which this attribute is assigned is followed by search bots.
"Noopener" attribute:- This feature is automatically added by Wordpress on all the external links. It prevents the access of any third party and open the link in a new tab. Thus it is kept for security reasons.
Noopener attribute has zero effect on SEO and so you can easily keep it on your external links to enhance the security of your website.

[levo]

They're for security, you can find official Google doc here [web.dev...]

It should not have any SEO impact.

[skaterpunk]

Good way to welcome a new member - and make the forum obsolete - if people are told to search elsewhere...

Hmmm, touchy crowd. I only meant that there are more than enough explanations already. The internet is filled with regurgitated information. If there is already an answer, do we need to keep repeating the same information.

I have been working with the Wordpress CMS for a number of years and the tags in mention are applied by default every time a link is added using the built-in link function. This has been the case for around…2 years now. I didn't realize it was so unknown.

[lammert]

No, not touchy, it has very much to do with the values of this forum.

On some boards, the highest value is assigned to the content. Moderators guard that no duplicate content is created, posts are heavily redacted to create content that will function as bait for the search engines and members are seen as tools to create content, all with the higher goal to create traffic to the site, and income through advertisements for the site owner.

Other boards like this one are different. The main asset is not the content but the member. The main goal here is not the creation of content, but member interaction. Moderators still guard the forums, but not with the goal to create search engine bait but to maintain a continuous conversation in a friendly environment.