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In order to track these links, we bounce them off our servers with a 302 redirect -- this way clicks show in our logs. In order to control the display of the referred text, we open the links in a new browser window (using javascript) -- hopefully users will come back to us. Both of these are important site functionalities.
These sites are our friends and also our competitors for traffic. So while we are happy to send traffic to them when it benefits our users, we would prefer that PR stays with our internal links, rather than being passed to them. But we also try to observe Brett's rules and would be happy to have some quality outbound links on our page.
So some questions:
Thanks in advance!
Somehow,reading this, I just dont get a warm fuzzy feeling to help.:)
Somehow,reading this, I just dont get a warm fuzzy feeling to help.:)
Hmm, perhaps I worded this to sound like we were a pseudo-directory, spam site, or something. I stickied Cabbie with our URL -- perhaps he can confirm the following:
The majority of the content on our pages is our own, original information, with links to a variety of selected authority sites who provide excellent product reviews, and prices and links to merchants who sell the product. When we provide links to reviews, we typically include our own written synopsis of the review, a small quote with attribution.
We believe we have organized product information in a way that provides useful functionality, helps users make an appropriate, educated buying decision, to research if they want, and to buy if and when when they are ready.
So assuming we are good souls whose objective is to benefit humanity through the selfless dissemination of information (and to make money doing it :) I would still love to hear if anyone has an answer to my questions, or could point me to a place that does.
Thanks!
Why not link and pass PR if you think these sites are with linking to in the first place? Don't link to them to follow Brett's rules,do it because it is the right thing to do.
PR is the most important factor. But hoarding it is not the answer. You are far better of concerning yourself with gaining PR from outside and making sure you have good internal navigation. Then just link freely to those other sites. Even ODP, with all their outbound links, keeps a large portion of their PR internal through their site navigation.
Oh yeah, lose the launching in another window thing. I really hate sites like that, as I use a tabbed browser and hate having to close windows that I didn't open. That puts your stie in the same category as a site with popup ads.
Is there any difference in having a redirect versus a direct link as far as Google is concerned?
Probably. But a 301 permanent redirect will pass PR correctly after a couple of months, and show as a backlink.
We don't try to obfuscate the javascript(<a href="javascriptpen('our_redirecting_url.html')">Site Name</a>. Is this ok? Will the redirected site get PR passed to them from us? Does this matter?
Nope, it will not currently pass PR.
Would adding <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" /> in the redirect message do anything to prevent Google from following that link?
If your concern is PR, then such a message just causes google to throw out that PR. They still allocate PR to that page, so it leaves the system and reaches a deadend.
I doubt that it would work if you have a header that redirects.
If the links were in a subdirectory, e.g. /external/ which we added as a disallow in our robots.txt would this do anything to prevent Google from following that link?
See above. You will be creating a deadend which will be wasting PR.
Don't waste or hoard the PR, pass it to those sites that give your site what little value it has.
I suppose we'll think about doing tracking of URL clicks for the authority sites we link to using the trick Google is now using -- build a trackable image request to our servers in the OnClick event. This way, other sites get direct credit, we know where our traffic is going, and maybe if Google gets their act together their algo will truly realize that it's at least as good to give (to others) as to receive.
Anyway, thanks again.
