JavaScript encoded links on an AngularJS framework...bad idea for Google?
-
Hi Guys,
I have a site where we're currently deploying code in AngularJS. As part of this, on the page we sometimes have links to 3rd party websites.
We do not want to have followed links on the site to the 3rd party sites as we may be perceived as a link farm since we have more than 1 million pages and a lot of these have external 3rd party links.
My question is, if we've got javascript to fire off the link to the 3rd party, is that enough to prevent Google from seeing that link? We do not have a NOFOLLOW on that currently.
The link anchor text simply says "Visit website" and the link is fired using JavaScript.
Here's a snapshot of the code we're using:
Visit website
Does anyone have any experience with anything like this on their own site or customer site that we can learn from just to ensure that we avoid any chances of being flagged for being a link farm?
Thank you
-
Hm, I'd be a little concerned if GSC can see it. Maybe GSC can see that JS turns it into a link, but can't figure out what that link is?
Any way, sounds like your hands are kind of tied until you can get those nofollows! Definitely make a note in your analytics platform when you get them implemented - it'll be interesting to see what effect they have on your rankings.
Good luck!
Kristina
-
Hi Kristina,
First of all, thank you for taking the time out to respond.
Very valid rationale you provided. I did have a look at the cache version before I posted on here and it didnt show the link I was looking for, however the GSC screen showed the link highlighted as a link.
That's what got me confused. I guess its safe to assume in that case that it wont be seen by Google considering it's not in the text version of the cached page.
I'll work on getting a NOFOLLOW in there since there's no guarantees with Google when they change stuff around. But, its great to know that it isnt an immediate requirement at the moment...
Thank you again Kristina!
-
Hi Kavit,
The short answer is no. Google can render some JS - possibly even AngularJS - so never assume that something rendered in JS is invisible to Google. You should assume that Google can see all links visitors can, and really push for a nofollow tag.
I usually check what Google can render by loading Google's cache of the page (go to Google.com and type in "cache:" in front of the exact URL of one of your pages). Look at the text-only version of the cache, and see if Google puts a link there. If they do, it's safe to assume that they can see that link. Another option is to use GSC to Fetch as Google; Google claims this is exactly what they're seeing.
If both the cache and GSC show that Google can't see a link, Google's probably not crawling it. But, Google's always getting better, and could suddenly see the links any day now. If these links are really a concern to you, I'd strongly suggest that you push your dev team to add nofollow tags to these outgoing links.
Best,
Kristina
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
-
Can affiliate links affect DA?
Hey guys, over the past two months my DA has gone down from 17 to 12, and I have no dura what could have caused it. I started putting in some Amazon affiliate links in my posts - could that be the reason why? Also, I have about 30 backlinks from a blog with a spam score of 11% - could this also be affecting it in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmyAed0 -
Partner Site In Bound Links
We have a staffing agency client that uses a 3rd party site (with different URL) to display open jobs for web viewers to see. However we are getting a bunch of backlinks from this site from the footer because it is set up as a White Label... Should I add a rel=nofollow to the links in the footer? Disavow the links from the site? Do nothing? I am not really sure. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aqabatech0 -
Sudden Drop in Keyword Ranking - No Idea Why
Hi Mozzers, I am in charge of everything Web Optimization for the company I work for. I keep active track of our SEO/SEM practices, especially our keyword rankings. Prior to my arrival at the company, in January of this year, we had a consultant handling the SEO work and though they did a decent job on maintaining our rankings for a hefty set of keywords, they were unable to get a particular competitive keyword ranking. This is odd because other derivations of that keyword which are equally competitive are all still ranking on page one. Also, full disclosure, they were not engaging in any questionable linking. In fact, they didn't do much of any link building whatsoever. I also haven't been engaging in any questionable content creation or spammy linking. We put out content regularly as we are a publicly traded company - nothing spammy at all. Anyway, one thing I tried since February was engaging in a social media sharing campaign among friends and coworkers to share the respective page and keyword on their Facebook and Google+ pages. To my surprise, this tactic worked just like natural search usually does - slowly and through the months I saw the keyword rank from completely invisible, to page 6, to page 3, to page 2, and finally onto position 6 page one as of just last week. Today, unfortunately, the keyword is invisible again :(. I am perplexed. It's tough to build links for our company as we are in the public and everything we do has to be approved by someone higher up. I also checked our webmaster tools and haven't seen any notifications that can give me clue as to what's going on. I am aware that there was a Penguin update recently and there are monthly Panda updates, but I'm skeptical as to whether or not those updates would be correlated to this because, at initial glance, our traffic and rankings for other keywords and pages don't seem to be affected. Suggestions? Advice? Answers? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
Is this website being punished by Google?
Hi, I just took over the SEO for a friend of mine's website. Is this website being punished by Google? It has a strong link score, the homepage needs work as far as Key wording goes but it does not appear in Google's top 100 for any keyword. I am not sure that the last SEO company did some harm. Can anyone give me some tips on getting my friend back into the mix? www.wallybuysell.com
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CKerr0 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0 -
Would Headspace Plug-in be a bad idea?
We use the plug in headspace for some posts because some things we want to show in a certain way on our site ie with a certain title but we want the title to be more descriptive for google. It used to work really well but now I have noticed a lot of posts that used to do really well in search being flagged up for multiple meta description and headers that I wondered wether they would be harming the site's query stats? Does anyone think that after the penguin/panda updates etc using headspace might be a negative option?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | luwhosjack0 -
Why is Google not punishing paid links as it says it will?
I've recently started working with a travel company - and finding the general link building side of the business quite difficult. I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive. However, the link profile pointed to one thing, that was incredibly obvious. They had purchased a large amount of sidebar text links from powerful blogs in the travel sector. Its painfully obvious what has happened, yet they still rank very highly for a lot of key terms. Why don't Google do something about this? They aren't the only company in this sector doing this, but it just seems pointless for white hats trying to do things properly, then those with the dollar in their pockets just buy success in the SERPS. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neilpage1230 -
Instability on the server - punishment in Google?
My site has about 50k pages indexed in Google. We are well respected, and we believe our stories add much value to the user. However, we are having serious problems with my hosting service and the site is unavailable for more than 15 hours. Unfortunately we also have no provision for him to return to work. I wonder if this kind of instability can cause some punishment on Google, if so, I wonder if there is anything we can do to tell Google that we are aware and working to resolve the problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lucastudio0