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Previously, you could just do a redirect script with php or something , but if you have the url in the link to the script, i have a sneaky suspicion google treats this like a link.
The other option would be to use javascript, but again it would appear google now follows it.
Any suggestions?
I havn't seen any cases of JS links being spidered - anybody have evidence to the contrary?
Also someone from Google officially said that they will "soon" be able to deal with JS. I read about it on the boards here somewhere.
Just my two cents..
Personally, I'd put your main links page in a section that was excluded by robots.txt.
GG - just to get this straight, you are advocating blocking robots access to a links page?
Why hide legitimate links from Google?
In fact, this seems like a bad idea - a site with a ton of incoming links but no outbound links could look very spammy...
Sites that feel the need to 'hide' links are likely NOT highly regarded by Google - at least in theory - and you are just helping them do their job by not spreading your PR around.
Jake has a good point about sites with no outgoing links sending up the 'spammy' flag. There is also evidence that good on-topic outgoing links helps your ranking.
Well no, he obviously didn't say that. He is just suggesting how to accomplish the non-leak asked about in the first post.
But to the question, you can't (or shouldn't) be able to have your cake and eat it too. If you you want your pages indexed and you link out, that *is* a PR vote. It's the whole point of the thing.
"GG - just to get this straight, you are advocating blocking robots access to a links page?"Well no, he obviously didn't say that. He is just suggesting how to accomplish the non-leak asked about in the first post.
Same thing
Uh, no.
It wasn't a general suggestion. It was a specific answer.
So really i would need to have a CGI forwarder page which was excluded in robots.txt?
What if i point all my links to a page excluded in robots.txt - does page rank flow to this non-existant page? Or does it just not flow there becuase the page doesnt exist.
As for having my cake and eating it, i want to build a good directory of sites and while it would be nice to give them votes, i want the site to be a success and keep page rank. So I would rather have my cake than giving so much of it away that i dont have any to eat at all!
I might start rewarding those webmasters who actually contribute to the distribution of PR. And how? Perhaps by rewarding websites that have easily spiderable outbound links to relevant pages on websites that they seem not to be related to?
That reminds me of something: Haven't I read quite a few people complaining about all those directory pages showing in SERPs lately?
Right now I'm busy with something else, but one of these days I'll be leaking some more PR by adding outbound links to my websites.
<edit>Inserted forgotten word</edit>
[edited by: troels_nybo_nielsen at 11:31 pm (utc) on Mar. 15, 2004]
Im trying to design a directory site which will not leak out lots of page rank to other sites.
How about you design a real site instead?
That aside, what you're asking is how you can link to info sites, because you have no original content, without even sharing some PR. I would suggest that not only is there an ethical parameter here, it has to be obvious that the info/content sites will always rise to the top while directories that depend on linking to other's content are doomed to eventual failure.
My several cents.
"How about you design a real site instead? "
I wouldnt expect that attitude from a senior member of this forum, even with a belated apology.
I personally find directory sites if well written are very useful, particularly when they are written for a certain subject and have reviews of the merits of different sites. This is how i was intending to approach my new site.
The fact that i want to keep page rank is becuase (as anyone who wants to optimise for search engines will no doubt agree) that i want my site to rank well. In turn this will benefit both me and google users.
Heretic. Burn the witch! ;) I used to worry about this in the past. Not much anymore. I was actually planning on adding some more outbound links, on the theory it may in the long run garner more inbound links. I've noticed that this tends to be a successful strategy if thinking beyond the short term.
(Note: my sites are amateur. Thus I don't have much to worry about losing; unlike most here running commercial sites who are afraid visitors will go to other sites.)
I wouldnt expect that attitude from a senior member of this forum, even with a belated apology.
Ok, as a senior member, (I should have posted less often), I'll apologize again and also give you a tip:
G seems to be rewarding linking out since Florida, thus the ubiquity of directories in the serps. So, my senior member advice is to link lots, and link often, especially if you have a directory site. At the moment, forget about PR leak, it isn't a factor.
In no way could that be interpreted as "advocating" a robots.txt exclusion for links pages
But it wasn't far away from being that. He didn't say "I woudln't do that if I were you" or "just let the PR flow, what comes around goes around"
He gave no warning about negative effects of doing it..... so in practise it was as good as condoning banning robots from the links.htm page
Well no, he obviously didn't say that. He is just suggesting how to accomplish the non-leak asked about in the first post.
I purposely took his quote out of context to clarify, and wanted to point out why it might be a bad idea to follow that advice, regardless of GG's post. (Said with total respect for GG)
netnerd:
The fact that i want to keep page rank is becuase (as anyone who wants to optimise for search engines will no doubt agree) that i want my site to rank well.
You're about to affirm the consequent. Don't do it.
PageRank is one of many, many variables used to rank pages. While PageRank leakage may cause a site to have lower rankings (everything else being the same - and I'm not convinced), is it really that relevant? Believe me, there are hundreds more important things to be doing first, before worrying about this.
If you can definitively show me evidence of PageRank leak and a drastic negative ranking effect as a result of it, please do.
Profile, don't speculate.
wouldn't it be wonderful if google would also
implement this little heuristic. easy to program,
not much needed in cpu cycles.
for an example of a forum that does this, you need
look no further than the screen you are looking at
right now.
at least blogs just link out without all these
tricks.
+++
If we are being honest with each other and asking for links it would not be an honest move to prevent a reciprocal link from being indexed. I would immediately remove a site that I discovered was doing this.
I think GG's response was a technical answer to a question in the first post - not a recommendation to do it.
if the webmaster who is linking to you find out you have blocking the link, he will be well p**S and using GG dirty tactic (lol) you can't do much about it, better to run a links page with 2 types of links
1 straight html which will pass pr (don't be greedy share the PR)
2 bounce the other links through a cgi re-direct which has a robots.txt deny on it ....... don't use 301 or 302.
DaveN
