Google, Links and Javascript
-
So today I was taking a look at http://www.seomoz.org/top500 page and saw that the AddThis page is currently at the position 19.
I think the main reason for that is because their plugin create, through javascript, linkbacks to their page where their share buttons reside. So any page with AddThis installed would easily have 4/5 linbacks to their site, creating that huge amount of linkbacks they have.
Ok, that pretty much shows that Google doesn´t care if the link is created in the HTML (on the backend) or through Javascript (frontend). But heres the catch.
If someones create a free plugin for wordpress/drupal or any other huge cms platform out there with a feature that linkbacks to the page of the creator of the plugin (thats pretty common, I know) but instead of inserting the link in the plugin source code they put it somewhere else, wich then is loaded with a javascript code (exactly how AddThis works).
This would allow the owner of the plugin to change the link showed at anytime he wants. The main reason for that would be, dont know, an URL address update for his blog or businness or something.
However that could easily be used to link to whatever tha hell the owner of the plugin wants to.
What your thoughts about this, I think this could be easily classified as White or Black hat depending on what the owners do. However, would google think the same way about it?
-
It's definitely a judgment call. There is legitimate reasoning to have a link to the widget author/creator if it's a single link. And providing the option to not have the link be there helps. Yet it's not 100% clear that Google does or does not penalize for this.
-
I have heard some discussion on wicked fire that Google has been known to penalize or manually de-index sites that use that sort of "widget backlink botnet" for lack of better word. While there might be legit uses for a widget with a link back to your site, Viagra spammers et al use similar scripts on hacked sites to change anchor text and give their sales sites more juice to rank for "buy viagra"
-
But what if the SEO is just a side effect of the link? Lets say, creating a plugin that let the user optinally shows or not a link to the site creator of the plugin, so now you have one less possibly bad thing to worry, after all users show the link only if they want to.
That link could also be seen as a way of the creator of the plugin promoting himself, someone could visit that site, see the plugin, like it and end up on the creators site to download a copy for him.
-
The data you see where AddThis is at position # 19 is not a signal that they're being ranked based on all those links, only that they have that many links. It's heavily debatable as to whether Google discounts all those links or not, however it probably is confirmation that Google might see them.
Now as to whether it's wise to do so or not - that too is debatable. I've personally had a brief discussion with Matt Cutts a while back asking about a specific type of link pattern that had to do with people offering "free services" that ultimately embedded "hidden" or otherwise "questionable" links on pages of sites, fairly similar to the scenario you describe. At the time, he said that those particular links were not a significant factor in the ranking of the sites where those links were pointed to.
Here's the bottom line I take on all of this - creating a service, plug-in or component that embeds links where the purpose of those links are purely for SEO is risky at best, and potentially harmful in the long-run. It may be of some SEO value today, yet it's a primary candidate for being hammered eventually.So personally I always advice clients to not even play that game.
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
-
Organic Listings showing Google Tag Manager + Google Page Title...?
I'm a bit stumped with this. I optimise all my titles etc for Australia - and now the organic liatings are showing something strange. For example ( we sell health supplements ) Meta title = "My Product , Buy Online Australia" If I type "My Product" - the title in the organic listings says "My Product - My Company Limited" - and the only place I can see it getting that from is a combination of Meta Data used in Google Tag Manager + the Name on my Google places page. This is much more obvious for categories.. but it's a pain in the butt. If I type "My Product Australia" Then the original "My Product , Buy Online Australia" comes up. Any ideas on policy etc? I have taken the "Limited" off the Google business page - so hopefully this will change over time - but I can't find any information on why google would do something like this. If you had shed any light on this - would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Help in Internal Links
Which link attribute should be given to internal links of website? Do follow or No follow and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Should I have as few internal links as possible?
On most pages of my site i have a Quick Links section, which gives x3 cross sales links to other products, a newsletter sign up link, link to Blog, x4 links from images to surveys, newsletters, feedback etc. Will these links be hurting my optimal SEO juice between pages, should the number of internal links be kept to a minimum? My site is www.over50choices.co.uk if that helps. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep1
Ash0 -
PR links
Its seems that at lot of or competitors are using PR site to place articles with links. They are using the same article across many sites with the same anchor text link - But they seem to be doing very well in the rankings.... I have steered away from this type of linking as I assumed Google wouldn't be keen on this type of activity but I seem to be wrong.... Any views on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Google and private networks?
I have one or two competitors (in the UK) in my field who buy expired 1 - 8 year old domains on random subjects (SEO, travel, health you name it) and they are in the printing business and they stick 1 - 2 articles (unrelated to what was on there before) on these and that's it. I think they stick with PA and DA above 30 and most have 10 – 100 links so well used expired domains, hosted in the USA and most have different Ip’s although they now have that many (over 70% of their backlink profile) that some have the same ip. On further investigation none of the blogs have any contact details but it does look like they have been a little smart here and added content to the about us (similar to I use to run xxx but now do xxx) also they have one or two tabs with content on (article length) that is on the same subject they use to do and the titles are all the same content. So basically they are finding expired 1 – 10 year old domains that have only been expired (from what I can see) 6 months max and putting 1 – 2 articles on the home page in relation with print (maybe adding a third on the subject the blog use to cover), add 1 – 3 articles via tabs at the top on subjects the sites use to cover, registering the details via [email protected] and that’s it. They have been ranking via this method for the last couple of years (through all the Google updates) and still do extremely well. Does Google not have any way to combat link networks other than the stupid stuff such as public link networks, it just seems that if you know what you are doing you get away, if your big enough you get away with it but the middle of the ground (mum and pop sites) get F*** over with spam pointing to there site that no spammer would dream of doing anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Create a link or redirect?
We have 60 demo movie pages on our site. We no longer link to these movie pages internally, because they are outdated; however, a lot of our partner companies are still linking to these pages. Some of these pages will have 10-15 linking root domains and a page authority of 30+... so pretty decent authority. These pages only include a movie on the pages, no links. I am trying to pass some of the link juice from these pages to other pages on our site. I am wondering if I should: A)Include transcripts on these pages, then link back to our current product page or solution pages? B)Set up redirects from these pages to a product or solution page? C)Set up a redirect to our homepage? Any advice? Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Is Google mad at me for redirecting...?
Hi, I have an e-commerce website that sells unique items (one of a kind). We have hundreds of items and the items are rapidly sold. Up till now I kept the sold items under our "sold items" section but it started to get back at me as we have more "sold" than non sold and we are having duplication problems (the items are quite similar besides to sizes etc.). What should we do? Should we redirect 100 pages each week? Will Google be upset with that? (for driving it crazy) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Google Places verification
What advice do you have for achieving verification for Google Places for a client? I have a client at the moment and I tried getting the call sent through and I'm not sure what happened but a couple of tries at this did not work. I've tried the post card way and I'm still waiting. Do I need to be more patient in Australia for this verification post card? Is there a way I can verify the info myself? note: I have set up a seperate email that there business email to handle a lot of the link building but this is different to there business email which Google uses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0