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Linking mechanism question

about referals, link counting and cloaking

         

gunther

7:12 am on Oct 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello all,

I have a site that has all his external (outgoing) links going through a script, with the link's database id as a parameter. This script is in a folder that is disallowed for all robots.
I used this method to be able to track the number of outgoing leads I'm producing for the different sites (this is done in the script)

Now when I start thinking about it, this leads to a site with no visual outgoing links for googlebot...
After all, the links are all to a script in the bot-forbidden folder that redirects you after logging your request.

Would it be a wise idea to have the links rendered directly (plain html a href) if the googlebot user agent is requesting the page?

Actually, I have some doubts about it, as the html produced for the bot will be quite different than the html for other user agents ...

In case of a manual review (or comparison when using another user agent), could this be interpreted as cheating?

Is it actually worth the risk of upsetting googlebot with 'special, different content' for him, or will linking to quality sites improve my PR? (it's PR6 for the moment)

Any ideas/comments?

Günther.

Dreamquick

7:53 am on Oct 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If you moved the link-out script to somewhere not disallowed then surely that would allow the 'bot to follow the link and then the redirect?

At that point you could simply setup some rules for which user-agents you treat as "real" visitors and which you will treat as "bots".

This also saves the worry about whether the content change will upset them requiring just a really minor change.

- Tony

gunther

7:56 am on Oct 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



What type of redirect should I use then?

for the momement it's a HTTP header
Location: {url}

should I use a http refresh, or even another method?

which one will be interpreted as an outgoing link by googlebot?

regards,

Günther.

Dreamquick

8:14 am on Oct 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Personally I'd use a temporary redirect (302), but http refresh might also work (not sure so lets see what other people say about it).

- Tony

martin

9:05 am on Oct 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



>Is it actually worth the risk of upsetting googlebot with 'special, different content' for him, or will linking to quality sites improve my PR? (it's PR6 for the moment)

It won't improve your PageRank bu it can improve your site theming if your outgoing links are on-topic.