Javascript links

[Scooter24]

I have a photo gallery site structured in country galleries. About two months ago I have added links to travelogues on the country gallery pages (i.e. links to travel reports to a specific country on the country gallery pages).

The site traffic has dropped since then, i.e. it would appear that Google does not like these links. I could remove these links, but in my opinion they should stay there, because the site is also a travel information resource, providing photos and travel reports to visitors.

I've noticed that with Javascript it is somehow possible to add links on pages, which are visible for humans but not for search engines (for instance Google Adsense does that).

Can anybody recommend a freeware Javascript software which does this?

[phranque]

The site traffic has dropped since then, i.e. it would appear that Google does not like these links.

have you verified that your drop in traffic is due to a decrease in Google Search traffic?

[rainborick]

The other question that comes to mind is was the loss of traffic from standard searches or image searches?

Google changed its handling of JavaScript links in 2009. Historically, links generated by JavaScript didn't pass any link value (and were recommended as an alternative to rel="nofollow"). But the advent of AJAX and the improvement in their ability to understand JavaScript led to their treating these links essentially the same as any other link. So, it's not that Google dislikes JavaScript-generated links; if anything, it's the links themselves. But, on the whole, I'd be skeptical that these links are the issue causing your drop in traffic.

[Scooter24]

@phranque: Yes.

@rainborick: Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. There are no Javascript links right now on the pages, only plain HTML ones. I was just thinking of replacing these plain HTML links with Javascript links which I thought Google would not see.
But you are writing now that Google can also see Javascript links? Then the only option will be to remove the links to the travel reports, which will be bad for the visitors of my site.

BTW, in another case, years ago I placed keywords with links below the images. Clicking on the keywords would initiate a site search for other images with the same keyword. Google didn't like that and was probably thinking I was trying to spam. Huge drop in traffic, ultimately I had to remove those clickable keywords from the image pages.

[rainborick]

Sorry. I did misread your post. But the answer to your question is, yes, Google (and likely Bing as well) can read JavaScript links and will treat them pretty much the same.

Links might affect your rankings in a couple of ways. The most obvious would be if a significant number of the target sites would fall into the "bad neighborhood" category. I seriously doubt you'd make this kind of mistake here even by accident, so let that one go. The second would be if the content of the page was degraded in some way by these links, ie. if they somehow made the page somewhat SPAMmy - the anchor text was approaching the level of keyword stuffing or some other issue, or the page's relevance to your target keywords was diluted. In any case, that's where I'd begin, but I'm thinking here only in terms of keyword searches. I don't really do anything with image search, so if that's where you lost traffic, I'm not sure what to suggest. Good luck!

[not2easy]

BTW, in another case, years ago I placed keywords with links below the images. Clicking on the keywords would initiate a site search for other images with the same keyword. Google didn't like that and was probably thinking I was trying to spam. Huge drop in traffic, ultimately I had to remove those clickable keywords from the image pages.

Apologies in advance in case I'm not fully understanding the situation but if you link to travel reports, the links to search for similar images would have been a better user experience to have linked to the reports and offering a separate link in case people wanted to "search for similar images" or "Find more pictures like this". User confusion is something to avoid and user resources and choices are seen as a good thing.

[Scooter24]

@not2easy: I'm afraid you are confusing the issues. The thing with the keywords was many years ago. The issue with the links to the travel reports is the current one.

[phranque]

...it is somehow possible to add links on pages, which are visible for humans but not for search engines...

instead of linking directly to the travelogues, link to a redirect script.
then use robots.txt to exclude the redirect script from being crawled.

[penders]

...link to a redirect script. then use robots.txt to exclude the redirect script from being crawled.

Or simply use

rel="nofollow"

on the anchor?

I'd be skeptical that these links are the issue causing your drop in traffic.

Me too.

[phranque]

Or simply use rel="nofollow" on the anchor?

...it is somehow possible to add links on pages, which are visible for humans but not for search engines...

a crawler may follow a link with a rel="nofollow" attribute.
the attribute is merely a request to deny attribution for the link, so it's a "nofollow" for PageRank, relevance, authority, and other indexing and ranking signals.
that might be sufficient until and unless google ignores the nofollow.