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.
Does google scrape links from PDF files? do these links pass link juice?
-
Title is pretty much the whole question.
-
I made a test and it seems that yes, the links from pdf count for ranking.
The test is on my Romanian blog http://seogan.ro/link-building-pdf-urile-o-sursa-de-linkuri-test
You can find an English translation here: http://www.seogan.com/pdf-link-building
Hope it helps.
-
Yes it does according to Google tech spec http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/50/admin_crawl/Introduction.html
which specifically states if follows html links in pdf 'It follows HTML links in PDF files, Word documents, and Shockwave documents'. Google's own api docs carry more weight than a comment in a forum_._ If they are licencing this out as an application it would suggest that the same technology is available in the main engine as does Dunamis's comment about a listing in a pdf document being found in search results.
You can test for youself by publishing a pdf with a link to a info page that does not show up in any other links. Include the pdf in your sitemap but not the test page and check if it shows in googles index site:yoursite.com the next time it crawls.
This also gives some insight in an interview with Matt Cutts - http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
Eric Enge: What about PDF files?
Matt Cutts: We absolutely do process PDF files. I am not going to talk about whether links in PDF files pass PageRank. But, a good way to think about PDFs is that they are kind of like Flash in that they aren't a file format that's inherent and native to the web, but they can be very useful. In the same way that we try to find useful content within a Flash file, we try to find the useful content within a PDF file. At the same time, users don't always like being sent to a PDF. If you can make your content in a Web-Native format, such as pure HTML, that's often a little more useful to users than just a pure PDF file.
-
Google definitely does index the contents of pdf files. I found this out the hard way as I had a real estate pdf on my site that I wanted to have listed in the index, but I didn't know that the contents would be crawled. The pdf contained some listings that I was not legally allowed to advertise on my site. (It was legal for me to give someone a report with the listings in it though).
When another realtor was searching for their own listing, my pdf came up. I got in trouble. I'm ok now though.

-
Have a look at this article http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067225/Google-Does-PDF-Other-Changes it explains some of the doc library search for pdf files and Google's statement here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/picture-of-thousand-words.html.
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
-
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
How to get 'Links to you site' via the google search console API?
hey! Any idea how I can download backlinks via the sear console API? This page from Google has a few commands but not the back links one - https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/webmasters/v3/ Has anyone collected backlinks data in the past? Apprrciate your help! Thanks Arjun
Link Building | | BaselineTry0 -
Nofollow links showing up in Google Search Console
If some nofollow links are showing up in Google Search Console, does that mean they are indeed passing link juice?
Link Building | | BrightonRecoveryCenter0 -
Do inbound links to download .exe files improve SEO?
The site, (http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/) sells barcode software. They also provide free printer drivers on their site. During a recent domain change (before I started helping them), they began looking at their inbound links and found quite a few external sites linking to these download files. However, when someone clicks on the link on one of these sites (i.e. http://vvs-motor.com.ua/barcode-printer-drivers) it immediately begins downloading the file (i.e. http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/drivers/archive/7.2/7.2.4/Unimark_7.2.4.exe) without taking the visitor to the site. The owner would greatly prefer this traffic to engage with the site and is considering 301 redirecting those download links to an actual webpage. Question: Would this look suspicious to Google? Would this have a positive or negative effect on SEO? The last factor to consider is that many of these sites will likely just recreate the list based on the new links at some future point. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | motosantiago0 -
Do links behind paywalls pass value?
Hi - we are about to have a product review go live on a site that uses a paywall. Will the link from this still pass SEO value to our site, and should we therefore optimise it? Thanks
Link Building | | GBC0 -
Will a mega menu on all pages dilute the link juice?
On our web site (http://www.betxpert.com) we have a mega menu with quite a lot of links in it. I am getting warnings in SEOmoz saying we have far to many links in our pages. But a lot of pages have large menus with a lot of links - are all pages punished for this then? My primary question is: Since the menu is on all pages, the pages linked in the menu will have a link in from all of our pages (200K+ pages) and a lot of these do not have a good ranking. So what I want to know is if the pages linked in the menu will have lower ranking because of the many links in - or is this a good thing? Should I consider setting "nofollow" for som of the links on other pages than the homepage (since this is the page with the best rank)?
Link Building | | rasmusbang0 -
Do links within imbeddable widgets carry link juice?
I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic? I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?
Link Building | | JesseCWalker1 -
Links on the same keyword
When is linking from one particular keyword to much. At what point could link building from one keyword be considered spam and potentially delist a site ? Is it possible for a site to be delisted for having to many links from the same keyword ? Heard linking from the website name is more important following recent changes. I try and link from a selection of 3 to 4 keywords. Thanks for your help
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0