Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads
-
Hi,
I have a simple question. If I want to put an image with a link to another site like a banner ad on my page, but do not want it counted by Google. Can I simply load the link and banner using jQuery onload from a separate .js file?
The ideal result would be for Google to index a script tag instead of a link.
-
Good Answer. I completely abandoned the banner I was thinking of using. It was from one of those directories that will list your site for free if you show their banner on your site. Their code of course had a link to them with some optimized text. I was looking for a way to display the banner without becoming a link farm for them.
Then I just decided that I did not want that kind of thing on my site even if it is in a javascript onload event if Google is going to crawl it anyway, so I just decided not to add it.
Then I started thinking about user generated links. How could I let people cite a source in a way that the user can click on without exposing my site to hosting spammy links. I originally used an ASP.Net linkbutton with a confirm button extender from the AJAX Control ToolKit that would display the url and ask the user if they wanted to go there. Then they would click the confirm button and be redirected. The problem was that the URL of the page was in the head part of the DOM.
I replaced that with a feature using a modal popup that calls a javascript function when the link button is clicked. That function then makes an ajax call to a webservice that gets the link from the database. Then the javascript writes an iframe to a div in the modal's panel. The result should be the user being able to see the source without leaving the site, but a lot of sites appear to be blocking the frame by using stuff like X-Frame-Options, so I'm probably going to use a different solution that uses the modal without the iframe. I am thinking of maybe using something like curl to grab content from the page to write to the modal panel along with a clickable link. All of this of course after the user clicks the linkbutton so none of that will be in the source code when the page loads.
-
I think what we really need to understand is, what is the purpose of hiding the link from Google? If it's to prevent the discovery of a URL or prevent the indexation of a certain page (or set of pages) - it's easier to achieve the same thing by using Meta no-index directives or wildcard-based robots.txt rules
or by simply denying Gooblebot's user-agent, access to certain pages entirely
Is is that important to hide the link, or is it that you want to prevent access to certain URLs from within Google's SERPs? Another option is obviously to block users / sessions referred from Google (specifically) from accessing the pages. There's lots can be done, but a bit of context would be cool
By the way, no-follow does not prevent Google from following links. It actually just stops PageRank from passing across. I know, it was named wrong
-
What about a form action? Where instead of an a element with a href attribute you add a form element with an action attribute to what the href would be in a link.
-
Thanks for that answer. You obviously know a lot about this issue. I guess they would be able to tell if the .js script file creates an a element with a specific href attribute and then add that element to a specific div tag after the page loads.
It sounds like it might be easier just to nofollow those links instead of going to all the trouble to redirect the .js file whenever Google Bot crawls the page. I fear that could be considered cloaking.
Another possibility would be a an alert that requires a user interaction before grabbing a url from a database. The user would click on the link without an href, the javascript onclick fires, the javascript grabs the the url from a database, the user is asked to click a button if they want to proceed, and then the user is redirected to the external url. That should keep the external URL out of the script code.
-
Google can crawl JavaScript and its contents, but most of the time they are unlikely to do so. In order to do this, Google has to do more than just a basic source code scrape. Like everyone else seeking to scrape data from inside of generated elements, Google has to actually check the modified source-code, after all of the scripts have run (the render) rather than the base (non-modified) source code before any scripts fire
Google's mission is to index the web. There's no doubt that, non-rendered crawls (which do not contain the generated HTML output of scripts) can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to get a rendered snapshot of the page-code. On average I have found rendered crawling to take 7x to 10x longer than basic source scraping
What we have found is that Google are indeed, capable of crawling generated text and links and stuff... but they won't do this all the time, or for everyone. Those resources are more precious to Google and they crawl more sparingly in that manner
If you deployed the link in the manner which you have described, my anticipation is that Google would not notice or evaluate the link for a month or two (if you're not super popular). Eventually, they would determine the presence of the link - at which point it would be factored and / or evaluated
I suppose you could embed the script as a link to a '.js' module, and then use Robots.txt to ban Google from crawling that particular JavaScript file. If they chose to obey that directive, the link would pretty much remain hidden from them. But remember, it's only a directive!
If you wanted to be super harsh you could block Googlebot (user agent) from that JS file and do something like, 301 them to the homepage when they tried to access it (instead of allowing them to open and read the JS file). That would be pretty hardcore but would stand a higher chance of actually working
Think about this kind of stuff though. It would be pretty irregular to go to such extremes and I'm not certain what the consequences of such action(s) would be
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
-
Does Google avoid indexing pages that include registered trademark signs?
I am suspecting that Google often hesitates to index pages that have registered trademarks on them that are marked with a ®. For example EGOL® used in the title tag or in the tag at the top of the page. Registered trademarks are everywhere and most retail product pages contain at least one of them. However, most people use the registered trademark names as text in their writing without adding the registered trademark sign of ®. Have you experienced a problem getting such pages indexed or have you read any articles about how Google treats registered trademarks?
On-Page Optimization | | EGOL0 -
Why does Google pick a low priority page on my site?
Hi Guys. One of my pages ranks quite well for "mid year diaries 14-15" on Google. The problem is it's a really specific product page (A4, Hardback, day-to-a-page diary I think). It would be much better for the user to land on our mid-year diaries category, not really deep into the site. Why is Google prioritizing this product page over our general 'mid year diaries' category? Especially when the category would relate to the search more accurately? I work for TOAD diaries and I think our page rank is 10 for this search. Eagerly awaiting some insight 🙂 Thanks in advance everyone! Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
How many outbound links is too many outbound links?
As a part of our SEO strategy, we have been focusing on writing several high quality articles with unique content. In these articles we regularly link to other websites when they are high quality, authoritative sites. Typically, the articles are 500 words or more and have 3-5 outbound links, but in some cases there are as many as 7 or 8 outbound links. Before we get too carried away with outbound links, I wanted to get some opinions on how many outbound links we should be trying to include and more information on how the outbound links work. Do they pass our website's authority on to the other website? Could our current linking strategy cause future SEO problems? Finally, do you have any suggestions for guidelines we should be using? Thank you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | airnwater0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
Google Page Rank of my site has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10
Google Page rank of my website has been dropped after Panda Update. Can anyone help me out to tell me the possible reasons about the same. We have tried to make our website more lively and user friendly. We have indulged some graphics to make it more attractive. But it seems it backfired us. my site is http://www.myrealdata.com as well as Google page ranking of my Quickbooks hosting page has been dropped as well. It would be great if someone can help me out with expert suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | SangeetaC1 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770