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.
Do Search Engines Try To Follow Phone Number Links
-
Any SEO thoughts on using rel="nofollow" when inserting a link to a phone number?
To make a phone number click to call we use (555) 555-1234
Wondering if search engines are trying to follow that link or if this is standard and not to worry. Any thoughts on if I should add rel="nofollow" to these or does it not matter?
Thanks!
-
Thanks Mike. I do get an occasional 404 on those phone numbers, but not a lot. Was more concerned about having links that were really not links and passing equity to nowhere. Appreciate the response!
-
Thanks Eric appreciate the answer! That is what I though but thought why not ask...
-
While a bot might try to follow it (because it is, in it simplest form, a type of link), that will not in any way adversely affect you. That tel: in the tag will tip them off that it is a telephone number and/or should be click-to-call. So no link equity will be lost, you won't start seeing tons of 404 warnings, or anything of that sort.
-
They certainly will make note of those phone numbers, but since the phone number is not a web page there's no way to pass on "link juice" to it. So, there's really no reason to mark it as a nofollow link.
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
-
What should I be shooting for for search visibility percentage?
Realistically - what's a "good" search visibility score? I'm working on a site that has been around less than a year. We are doing 3 blogs a week with carefully selected keywords. I know it will take time and lots of SEO work - but I'm interested in any ideas on what I should shoot for. Thanks for any thoughts! (Also not a local listing or anything - national search.)
On-Page Optimization | | mm19804 -
Linking to External Site In Nav Bar
Hi, we are a celebrity site but also own a separate sports site with its own URL. We have a link to that site in our Nav bar. Are we being penalized by having that link? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Uinterview0 -
NOINDEX, FOLLOW on product page - how about images indexing?
Hi, Since we have a lot of similar products with duplicate descriptions, I decided to NOINDEX, FOLLOW most of these different variants which have duplicate content. However, I guess it would be useful in marketing terms if Google image search still listed the images of the products in image search. How does the image search of Google actually work - does it read the NOINDEX on the product page and therefore skip the image also or is the image search completely dependent on the ALT tag of any image found on our site? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | speedbird12290 -
Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?
I got hit pretty badly by Panda 4.0 (1/3 of my traffic lost), and I'm fairly certain it was because Google had potentially indexed over 20 million pages from a site filtering piece of software and got done for duplicate content. I have since fixed that using URL Parameters and that 20 million is down to 2.7 million now and I have submitted a clean site map, so now I wait. I have just done a site relaunch and am trying to determine if there are any other issues. I run an online store, and I have a mega menu with well over 300 links in it - makes the user experience really quick and easy to jump exactly where you want - and then I have about 30 links in the footer. I know there's a 'no more than 100 links on a page' guideline for Moz, but does anyone know if Google is smart enough to see the same header / footer navigation structure on every page of a site and know it's navigation and not water down the rest of the links, or do I need to re-think and simplify my navigation? It's one of those things that's there for a user experience and now I'm worried that I'm being penalised. The site is www dot shopnaturally dot com dot au
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
How to exclude URL filter searches in robots.txt
When I look through my MOZ reports I can see it's included 'pages' which it shouldn't have included i.e. adding filtering rules such as this one http://www.mydomain.com/brands?color=364&manufacturer=505 How can I exclude all of these filters in the robots.txt? I think it'll be: Disallow: /*?color=$ Is that the correct syntax with the $ sign in it? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | neenor0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
Does a phone number in the title tag hurt your rankings in SERP?
Hi Mozzers, One of my client is a carpet cleaner and I was wondering if adding a phone number into the title tags would hurt our rankings . I am asking because the client has mentioned it and that we do have some space to add a phone number into the tag. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks
On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0