Does Yelp pass link juice?
-
This is probably a profoundly obvious question, but I can't seem to find an explicit answer on the internet, so I'll ask it here:
Yelp's links out to local business websites are not nofollow'd, but they go through a javascript-based redirect. My understanding is that javascript redirected links do not pass link juice, so a link from a yelp profile will not directly impact my page authority; however, it looks like yelp does use nofollow judiciously for internal links, so I don't understand why they would allow follow for these "useless" outbound links.
Do yelp's javascript-redirected links pass link juice?
-
Just curious - where do you see the JS redirects? I'm seeing server-side redirects, but the interesting thing is that the return a 200 (not a 301 or 302), which could suggest they pass link-juice.
My gut sense is that Miriam's right - they probably mask direct link-juice but are still very valuable as a citation, especially for local search.
-
Hello Tyler!
What an interesting question! Not one I've seen asked before and I don't have an authoritative answer for you. I did find a couple of mentions of this out on the web.
Here's one from http://www.tastyplacement.com/6-best-free-local-business-directories-for-backlinks-customers-hits
4. Yelp.com. Yelp is popular (a fair number of visitors) and its pages rank well in the search engines. So, a listing here might earn you some supplemental results in a Google search. It’s review-based, and there are a lot of “interactive” features you’ll want to skip if you just want to list your business. Valuable and free. One limitation: Yelp does not give dofollow (a link that passes valuable pagerank to the target site) backlinks.
And a discussion at Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/jburq/acquiring_citations_from_directories_yelp_hotfrog/
I tend to think of the value of sites like Yelp as being in their quality as a citation and their ability to host conversation (hopefully positive) about your business. I am going to ask one of our super SEOs to step in and give you an opinion on this. It's a very good question!
Miriam
-
Oficially, no it does not pass link juice, BUT google is smart enough so you will gain smth from this link. + you can get some good traffic. It's always good to have your business listed on sites like yelp.
-
Not a clue. I'd guess they're nofollowing the internal links to better architect what internal pages are ranking, but maybe they intended profile links to pass juice, and implementation wasn't what they'd thought it be.
-
Thanks for the answer! Can you think of any reason why yelp doesn't nofollow these links? They seem to nofollow a lot of links within their own site, so it seems strange that these links are not nofollow'd.
-
I'm 99.9% positive the answer is no, they do not pass link juice. JS-redirected links are all hinky like that.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Too many links in header menu
I'm working on a few clients who are starting to get big header menus. Their site now easily exceeds the 100 links per page recommendation. Normally I would recommend them to cut down on the links, bit in this case these sites have menus that makes navigation easier. I honestly think these menus adds value for the users. The dilemma is that I think the menus provide value from an UX standpoint, but I'm not sure from the SEO standpoint. Any recommendations to this dilemma? Some examples: http://moodsofnorway.com/no/ http://www.gmax.no/ http://www.flust.no/
Technical SEO | | Inevo0 -
Too Many On-Page Links?
How much would this affect my page ranks performance? There are many Too Many On-Page Links? warning on my campaign. should I address this issue right away to fix it or leave it as it would not matter seriously ? I've looked at some of the pages and think all of them are necessary. Could someone help me? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Affiliate links
I have a wordpress blog and was wondering the best seo practice for doing affiliate link redirects? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Number of links in new nav bar
Hi We've just had a spanky new design implemented on Hypnosis Downloads.com My concern is over the top nav. While it's nice for users to get those handy dropdowns, it adds a lot of links to every page, and spreads link weight out equally over all sorts of pages. The place I really want the link weight is under the Downloads link - in those categories and so I am thinking about removing dropdowns for everything but this category. Does that sound like a sensible move to you? Is it likely to actually make a difference? Cheers Roger
Technical SEO | | RogerElliott0 -
Redirection help to retrieve broken links
Hi, my hosting company after they updated my joomla website lost thousands of pages of content, i am now searching for all broken links and re doing the content to get my links back, but i am having a problem understanding how to redirect these links. For example, i have now managed to retrieve this page http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think but the old url for this page was http://www.in2town.co.uk/Have-Your-Say/Liberal-Dem-Leader-says-He-Will-be-The-Next-Prime-Minister-What-Do-You-Think/menu-id-4953 i do not have the unfriendly url for this page, so what i am trying to find out is, how to tell google that the above page is now http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think in my joomla site. if anyone could please explain how to do this with joomla 1.5 then you will make me very happy as then i will be able to retrieve some of my lost links
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Will changing our colocation affect our site's link juice?
If we change our site's server location to a new IP, will this affect anything involving SEO? The site name and links will not be changing.
Technical SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Broken Inner Links - Tool Recommendations?
Do you have any recommendations for tools that scan an entire website and report broken inner links? I run several UGC centered websites and broken inner links, and external, is an issue. Being that these websites are several hundred thousand pages large, I am not really all that excited about running software on my desktop (xenu link sleuth for example). Any online solutions you could recommend would be great!
Technical SEO | | uderic0