Do you get credit for an external link that points to a page that's being blocked by robots.txt
-
Hi folks,
No one, including me seems to actually know what happens!?
To repeat:
If site A links to /home.html on site B and site B blocks /home.html in Robots.txt, does site B get credit for that link?
Does the link pass PageRank? Will Google still crawl through it? Does the domain get some juice, but not the page?
I know there's other ways of doing this properly, but it is interesting no?
-
Hi Dave,
I believe there would be two answers to your question
1. If Googlebot finds the page via the external link, then YES:
- the link will pass PageRank
- Googlebot will crawl
- both the page and the domain will get juice, because Googlebot hasn't seen the robots.txt
2. If Googlebot comes to the site via the root (assuming that it obeys the command to block), then NO:
- None of the above would happen because the page would never be seen by Googlebot, so the incoming link would never be seen.
If, on the other hand, Googlebot comes to the page via the root and ignores the command to block, then it should be reasonable to assume that means the page would be crawled & links attributed as though there were no robots.txt, but that is only an assumption, so I guess your question would remain open.
Don't suppose that helped much
Sha
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
-
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
New Page Showing Up On My Reports w/o Page Title, Words, etc - However, I didn't create it
I have a WordPress site and I was doing a crawl for errors and it is now showing up as of today that this page : https://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/event-registration/?event_id=551&name_of_event=HTML5 CSS3 is new and has no page title, words, etc. I am not even sure where this page or URL came from. I was messing with the robots.txt file to allow some /category/ posts that were being hidden, but I didn't re-allow anything with the above appendages. I just want to make sure that I didn't screw something up that is now going to impact my rankings - this was just a really odd message to come up as I didn't create this page recently - and that shouldnt even be a page accessible to the public. When I edit the page - it is using an Event Espresso (WordPress plugin) shortcode - and I don't want to noindex this page as it is all of my events. Sorry this post is confusing, any help or insight would be appreciated! I am also interested in hiring someone for some hourly consulting work on SEO type issues if anyone has any references. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | webbmason0 -
Too Many Page Links
I have 8 niche websites for golf clubs. This was done to carve out tight niches for specific types of clubs then only broadens each club by type - i.e. better player, game improvement, max game improvement. So far, for fairly young sites, <1 year, they are doing fairly well as I build content. Running campaigns has alerted me to one problem - too many on-page links. And because I use Wordpress those links are on each page in the right sidebar and lead to the other sites. Even though visitors arrive via organic search in most cases they tend to eventually exit to one of the other sites or they click on a product (Ebay) and venture off to hopefully make a purchase. Ex: Drivers site will have a picture link for each of the other 7 sites. Question: If I have one stie (like a splash page) used as one link to that page listing all the sites with a brief explanation of each site will this cause visitors to bounce off because they will have one click, than the list and other clicks depending on what other club/site they would like to go to. The links all open in new windows. This would cut down on the number of links per page of each site but will it cause too much work for visitors and cause them to leave?
Technical SEO | | NicheGuy0 -
Why can't i get the page if i type/paste url directly?
Hello, just click the following link, http://www.tuscany-cooking-class.com/es/alojamiento/villa-pandolfini/ It might be show the 404 page, but follow this way, www.tuscany-cooking-class.com/es then select alojamiento link, then select first property name with villa-pandolfini, Now you can view the page content, why it behave like this, We are using joomla with customized. Anyone help me to fix this issue Thanks Advance Alex
Technical SEO | | massimobrogi0 -
Too Many On-Page Links?
How much would this affect my page ranks performance? There are many Too Many On-Page Links? warning on my campaign. should I address this issue right away to fix it or leave it as it would not matter seriously ? I've looked at some of the pages and think all of them are necessary. Could someone help me? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Is having too many outgoing external links bad?
I'm currently writing articles for my site Eugene Computer Geeks and remember reading somewhere that having more then 100 outgoing links is a bad idea. I plan on writing lots of guides, and most of them will have several relevant links. Some examples are: a virus removal/prevention guide I want to link to the different antivirus programs I'm recommending. Or on the "Free WIFI in Eugene, OR" guide, I plan on linking to all the businesses' websites that offer free wifi. **Would having too many outgoing links hurt my rankings in anyway? ** If so, should I use the "nofollow" tag to prevent any harm? I always thought that having lots of relevant outgoing links was a good thing, but lately have been reading otherwise. What is all your opinions here at SeoMoz?
Technical SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0