Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt
-
Hi,
I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark
-
I think you did the right thing. Engines will take a while until they re-crawl your robots.txt and actually following what you commanded.
Extra steps I would take:
- 302 the redirect, probably is just a line of code doing the redirect after setting some cookies or session variables.
- Try to edit the affiliate codes to work with Javascript instead of naked URLs ( could be something like <ins class="affiliate">that is later switched to a text link or banner using JS). This will not only allow you to set a nofollow for those links, but you could be able to remove/block specific affiliates or pages where you don't want your links/banners.</ins>
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
-
How should we handle re-directory links? Should we remove these links?
We are currently cleaning up bad links that were purchased by a previous SEO agency. We have found links on anonym.to pages that redirect traffic to our site automatically. How should this be handled? Should we remove these links?
Technical SEO | | Lorne_Marr0 -
How to use robots.txt to block areas on page?
Hi, Across the categories/product pages on out site there are archives/shipping info section and the texts are always the same. Would this be treated as duplicated content and harmful for seo? How can I alter robots.txt to tell google not to crawl those particular text Thanks for any advice!
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Does Bing ignore robots txt files?
Bonjour from "Its a miracle is not raining" Wetherby Uk 🙂 Ok here goes... Why despite a robots text file excluding indexing to site http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ is the site url being indexed in Bing bit not Google? Does bing ignore robots text files or is there something missing from http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/robots.txt I need to add to stop bing indexing a preview site as illustrated below. http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/preview-bing-indexed.jpg Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Affiliate links
I have a wordpress blog and was wondering the best seo practice for doing affiliate link redirects? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Robots.txt Showing in SERP Results
Currently doing a technical audit for a website and when I search "Site:website.com -www" the only result is website.com/robots.txt I was wondering if anyone else has come across this before -- or what this may mean from a technical audit standpoint. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vectormedia0 -
Robots.txt
Hi there, My question relates to the robots.txt file. This statement: /*/trackback Would this block domain.com/trackback and domain.com/fred/trackback ? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0