Anyone See This Before? Google Following Links that are Not Hyperlinks
-
Today I was going through my Google Webmaster URL Errors (404s) info. I came across two links in my URL Errors report that are NOT actually hyperlinks on the source page.
Both of these links are from two different forum-type websites. In both cases, the post references a URL on my website (incorrectly, hence the 404 error) in the text of the post but did NOT actually link to my site. I looked at the source code...no href.
Both forum posts simply had a
tag or
tag around the incorrect URL text referencing my site.
I have never seen this before or heard that Google will follow a URL that is not actually a hyperlink. Anyone else?
-
Had a bit of a dig and found this post which seems to confirm the reference being followed such as it is although not clear if any real ranking benefit.
http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/
Certainly is an interesting case and I agree nice to be able to 'fix' these errors and if there is some seo side benefits of any kind, so much the better!
-
Lynn:
A public service type thing letting you know about a bad URL and if someone copy and paste the URL it won't 404 anymore by setting up a 301 is possible.
I check my WMT about every month for 404s and this is the first time that I noticed these kinds of "links".
I just checked my latest backlinks report in WMT and these non-links don't show up in this report.
Perhaps there is some co-occurrence SEO benefit though? Even if there is no SEO benefit it is nice "fixing" these for the potential website visitor to my site and I like seeing people mentioning us.
-
Hi,
I just saw this in one of my gwt reports also, same case, a full url in a forum, http:// and all, but not linked and it is showing up in the 404 errors notices.
Is it likely that this is just a public service type thing from GWT letting you know that there is a bad url floating around?
At the end of the day a full url is pretty much the same as a link, its just not clickable! To be honest I would be a bit surprised if google wasn't noting these type of references. Open to abuse sure, but in many cases completely legitimate references to other pages that just happen to not be hyperlinks. Doubt it contributes much (if anything) to rankings but not that surprising I guess that google can see it for what it is (a reference to a url) and if that url is bad then it shows up in your gwt reports.
-
AndieF:
Sure. Here is a link to one...
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lighting/msg112233371417.html
The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 2nd post from davidtay - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/4inch-12v-recessed-lighting-housing-rem odel-75w.html.
Here is another one...
http://www.opensourcescript.net/answers/question.php?qid=20130425170248AACa3M1
The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 3rd Answer - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/under-cab
Thanks for sharing that video! I can definitely see Matt's point about potential abuse. However, from my Webmaster Tools it definitely looks like they are following these reference links and not completely ignoring them.
-
Really interesting. Would you be able to share with us the URLs of your site and the forums it's at?
Edit: I found this video at in which Matt Cutts suggests that they don't use it as a signal, although it is a few years old now.
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
-
Malicious Link
Hello all, We're doing an adwords campaign, and Google has said that there is a malicious link on the website we're looking to advertise - so cannot launch the campaign. I've tried to go through Search Console (I am a novice BTW). And it says that "Domain properties are not supported at this time". Which I don't understand. Any advice please?!
Technical SEO | | PartisanMCR0 -
Followed Linking Root Domains and No Followed Linking Domains
If you have more NoFollowed Linking Root Domains than Followed Linking Root Domains is that a problem?
Technical SEO | | INN0 -
Ratio of linking C-blocks to Linking domains
Hi, Our linkbuilding efforts have resulted in acquiring a high number of backlinks from domains within a C-block. We all know Google issues penalties whenever someone's link profile looks unnatural. A high number of backlinks but a low number of linking C-blocks would seem to be one of reasons to get penalized. Example: we have 6,000 links from 200 linking root domains coming in from 100 C-blocks. At what point should we start to worry about being penalized/giving off an unnatural look to mr G?
Technical SEO | | waidohuy0 -
Google see 302 but it is 200 OK - OsCommerce
Hi! I´ve a problem with a webshop that run OsCOmmerce. Google report thousands of urls "Not followed" in Webmaster Tools, and it´s increasing for every day. When you fetch as Google you get a 302 to ../cookie_usage.php. But if you fetch the page in your browser you get 200 OK. Why does Google get 302 but users 200? We´ve checked for malware and restored old backups, nothing helps. Thoughts about this?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0 -
Google Webmaster Tools Reporting False Links
I was looking at Google Webmaster Tools and the amount of links that are reported in there are inaccurate. They reported over 50,000 links that created a huge spike in their link graph and I checked some of the links and they don't even have the link on their site. Can anyone help with this?
Technical SEO | | TopFloor0 -
A Puzzling Link
I'm stumped and I'm hoping some mozzers will be able to help. I run our company blog (http://scottymacblog.com/). The last couple of days I have noticed that the blog is receiving some traffic from cnn.com. I looked, but cannot find any mention of the blog on cnn. Adding to my frustration is that the content on cnn is constantly changing. Our blog doesn't do any sort of advertising and no one affiliated with the blog posts on cnn. As great as it is to be getting traffic from such a valued source, I have no idea why. Has something like this happened to (for?) anyone else? Any ideas on how I can research the source of the link? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | EssEEmily0 -
Google Shopping Australia/Google Merchant Centre
So Google Shopping has finally landed in Australia so we've got some work todo hooking it up to our client ecom sites. Right now we have a handful of clients who are setup, the feed is getting in their ok but all products are sitting in "disapproved" status in the dashboard and clicking into each individual product the status says awaiting review. I logged a support ticket with Google to get some more info on this as it doesn't look right to me (ie the disapproved status in dashboard) and got a useless templated answer. Seems that if I switch the country destination to US the products are approved and live in google.com shopping search within the hour. Switch back to Australia and they go back to disapproved status. Anyone having the same issue/seen this before? I simply don't trust Google support and wondering if there's other factors at play here.
Technical SEO | | Brendo0
