What counts as a backlink?

[cdkrg]

I'm trying to control my pagerank drain and I am making offsite links like this:

<a href="#" onclick="Go('http://www.otherwebsite.com')">DESCRIPTION</a>

My question is whether search engines would consider that a link to the linked site. I am trying to prevent one site from losing any pagerank to the sites that are linked to in that way.

Will my method work?

BTW, there is a script in the page header that completes the redirect.

[Marketing Guy]

I would guess that if google can follow the link, then there will be PR transfered to the page.

But seriously, I wouldnt worry about it.

PR isn't that relevant anymore, and would be more relvant is the incoming PR, and not the outgoing loss.

(I would argue that PR hasn't been relevant for a long time, but Im sure that would just start a lengthy PR relevance debate! ;))

Scott

[isorg]

The thing about cloaking the outgoing link is that noone would want to exchange links with you, if they were aware that your link would not help their PR. The only ones who would fall for it is webmasters who weren't savvy enough to notice what you were doing... but then, would their pages have enough PR for their link to you to matter...?

[cdkrg]

I'm not doing this for exchanged links. See, this is for a forum and many spammers try to post linsk just to get a backlink. What I am trying to do is make all links that are user submitted use this tactic.

This is not for cheating a webmaster out of a link exchange (the site I plan to use this for does not exchange links).

In any case I'm not here to discuss the whole PR issue. I just want to know if the link counts in the site's backlinks. I have a few fancier tricks I could use that I know would work but want to know if they are needed.

[thorny]

i'm a little late to reply but i was wondering what are those other techniques you could use to deplete link drain?

I have read an article mentioning it is possible to use javascript to deplete link drain. It didn't mention a method however.

[Marcia]

Let's back up just a second here and re-examine something. Even though it doesn't relate in this particular case, it does relate in most other cases; so let's take another look at a few things anyway.

PR does indeed mean something nowadays, albeit more for some markets and some searches than others. Just ask someone who's got a site that hasn't got any. ;)

Or ask someone with a bit of a penalty who got their links trounced enough so their PR and backlinks go down just enough so that the majority their traffic is cut off.

It's not only PR, and again - even though it doesn't apply in this case, anchor text does indeed have value. And what does apply in this case as well as a lot of other cases, the anchor text of outbound links on a page surely does have a degree of value. In some cases where it's uncontrolled unwanted links, it can be something we won't want on a page.

We have to be very careful about making blanket statements and stating things as absolutes. There are too many variables involved in too many situations for us to do that without qualification.

cdkrg, I wouldn't worry all that much about PR leakage, there's probably more reason to be concerned about avoiding linking to inappropriate sites.

Linking out is not necessarily the bad thing a lot of people think it is. It's just that it's something a site owner should remain in full control of, which is good enough reason to do what you're doing.

[twilight47]

What is the quantified measure of "link drain"? I don't think there is and I don't think it's that important. Especially to a well inbound linked page. IMO.

[cdkrg]

I have an tutorial and example scripts about this on my site. One of these days I'll copy the text over here (the text is not yet finished).

[metagod]

why link to the site if it isn't worth "voting" for?

do it legitimately or don't do it at all!

[Dave_Hawley]

Totally agree with metagod.

You are also most likley worrying about nothing. Are you forum pages even spidered by Google? Many forums are not. Even if they are, MOST inner pages of Forums have no PR anyway.

I run a very popular forum, which is spidered by Google, and would not loose a moments sleep over any relavent links posted in it. If Google take away PR because of it, so be it! It helps the users and any searchers and that is the important thing.

Dave

[jayq]

The only links out you should watch outfor is links to "bad neighborhoods" - I have seen my pages get hits for the text of the sites they are linking at times.

[cdkrg]

Fair enough, I don't mind if you give out backlinks, I don't. ;-)

It's not just about PR. But I see no advantage of convincing others. In any case I'm not doing it with JavaScript anymore. I'm using a more secure method that I am sure doesn't give backlinks.

It's about control over SEO, not just PR.

[ciml]

<a href="#" onclick="Go('http://www.example.com')">DESCRIPTION</a>

[example.com...] will be seen as a link. The following used to avoid PR drain; I don't know if it still does:
<a href="#" onclick="Go('http://' + 'www.example.com')">DESCRIPTION</a>

This is probably more sensible now:
<a href="#" onclick="Go('http://' + 'www.example' + '.com')">DESCRIPTION</a>

Alternatively, something like ROT13 would be easy enough to implement.

thorny:
> ...what are those other techniques...

For a while, returning status 404 avoided PR drain while robots exclusion didn't. This changed in the August update (404s and robots excluded links were draining PR), but I don't know if it's changed back since September.

Some people would use IP/USER_AGENT delivery, but I prefer to send Googlebot the same as anyone else.