Does Google follow links inside a <noscript>tag?</noscript>

[BallyhooLtd]

I'm looking at making an embedable calculator and asking users to embed it to their website. I had the idea of using javascript to include the calculator which would also conatain a text link back to my site in order to gain some back links.

If it's possible Google won't see the link (as they may not execute the javascript), is it safe to place the link in the

<noscript>tag? If so, Will it be indexed and will Page Rank be passed?</span></p> <p>Thanks in advance for your answers. </p> <p>Anthony</p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span></p></noscript>

[Carson-Ward]

Hi there,

Google is getting better at crawling Javascript and pulling URLs out, so there's a fair chance it will count anyway.

Links in the

<noscript>tag are crawled, but make sure that the noscript content is well-suited for a user with Javascript disabled. Do not turn it into a list of links :)</p></noscript>

[William.Lau]

If its hidden, it won't be counted as a link. The user/viewer must be able to see the actual link and the robot has to be able to crawl it.

I believe WMT has a crawling option to show you what the robot sees on your page. You can perhaps create a draft page on your own site and use WMT to see if the page is crawled and if the link is seen.

[BallyhooLtd]

Thanks for your answer.

This is currently just an idea so we are unable to test it as yet.

We know that the link would be visible if a user didn't have JavaScript enabled, therefore Google should see also the link. The question is would Google recognise this as a legitimate link or would it treat it as a hidden link and therefore give it less priority.

Cheers

[William.Lau]

The bottom line is that the link is rendered at the load of the webpage. So if you already have someone with the calculator on their webpage, see if your link is there and has the ability to be clicked. If so, it should be counted as a backlink.

As long as the link is rendered at the end, and the HTML code shows the link in HTML, it should be counted as a backlink.