Thousands of links coming from an iframe

[holmesmedia]

We have an iframed calculator on one website (www.renewablesguide.co.uk) which has a text link to another of our websites (www.solarguide.co.uk) which is where the calculator originates. We allow other sites to embed the calculator which gives us the benefit of a followed link back to our site.

However in the case of renewablesguide (which we own) we've added a tab to the calculator on every page which GWT shows up as 24 000 links from this site hitting the Solar Guide homepage.

As the link is held within an iframe would this amount of links be seen as spammy?

[RyanPurkey]

There are likely enough signals to consider the link similar to an internal link which has similar numbers, meaning: even though they're technically on separate domains, your ownership and relationship of both domains make links between the two more like internal than external links.  So doing nothing is definitely an option, but doing something that enhances user experience should be the guiding force if you do change.  Cheers!

[holmesmedia]

Thanks for the response. I think a no-follow from the renewablesguide page link to the calculator is probably the best course of action. Oddly it has been like this for years and never been highlighted as an issue nor penalized so I'm half tempted to do nothing.

[RyanPurkey]

On your own site you might consider removing the text based link or being more specific and linking to the calculator page on: www.solarguide.co.uk.  I'd also do an analysis of visits from www.renewablesguide.co.uk to www.solarguide.co.uk via the calculator text link in order to see how users behave when following that link. Is there a higher bounce rate than average? Are they viewing many pages on the solar site? Few? And so on.   You'll get a decent idea though of the user experience from those specific visitors and whether or not the link is worth keeping or in need of better UX optimization in order to really benefit your users.  Cheers!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

For my vote, I would "nofollow" this link. The reason being, that's a ton of links from the same site for the same thing. Don't be discouraged as these links are still extremely valuable.

It's either that, or I would create a designated page for the calculator to live on instead of iframing it on multiple pages. That way, you can have one link to your website from one page on your other site, that other product pages are linking to.

Let me know if I am understanding correctly - hope this helps - good luck!