Anyone See This Before? Google Following Links that are Not Hyperlinks
-
Today I was going through my Google Webmaster URL Errors (404s) info. I came across two links in my URL Errors report that are NOT actually hyperlinks on the source page.
Both of these links are from two different forum-type websites. In both cases, the post references a URL on my website (incorrectly, hence the 404 error) in the text of the post but did NOT actually link to my site. I looked at the source code...no href.
Both forum posts simply had a
tag or
tag around the incorrect URL text referencing my site.
I have never seen this before or heard that Google will follow a URL that is not actually a hyperlink. Anyone else?
-
Had a bit of a dig and found this post which seems to confirm the reference being followed such as it is although not clear if any real ranking benefit.
http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/
Certainly is an interesting case and I agree nice to be able to 'fix' these errors and if there is some seo side benefits of any kind, so much the better!
-
Lynn:
A public service type thing letting you know about a bad URL and if someone copy and paste the URL it won't 404 anymore by setting up a 301 is possible.
I check my WMT about every month for 404s and this is the first time that I noticed these kinds of "links".
I just checked my latest backlinks report in WMT and these non-links don't show up in this report.
Perhaps there is some co-occurrence SEO benefit though? Even if there is no SEO benefit it is nice "fixing" these for the potential website visitor to my site and I like seeing people mentioning us.
-
Hi,
I just saw this in one of my gwt reports also, same case, a full url in a forum, http:// and all, but not linked and it is showing up in the 404 errors notices.
Is it likely that this is just a public service type thing from GWT letting you know that there is a bad url floating around?
At the end of the day a full url is pretty much the same as a link, its just not clickable! To be honest I would be a bit surprised if google wasn't noting these type of references. Open to abuse sure, but in many cases completely legitimate references to other pages that just happen to not be hyperlinks. Doubt it contributes much (if anything) to rankings but not that surprising I guess that google can see it for what it is (a reference to a url) and if that url is bad then it shows up in your gwt reports.
-
AndieF:
Sure. Here is a link to one...
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lighting/msg112233371417.html
The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 2nd post from davidtay - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/4inch-12v-recessed-lighting-housing-rem odel-75w.html.
Here is another one...
http://www.opensourcescript.net/answers/question.php?qid=20130425170248AACa3M1
The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 3rd Answer - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/under-cab
Thanks for sharing that video! I can definitely see Matt's point about potential abuse. However, from my Webmaster Tools it definitely looks like they are following these reference links and not completely ignoring them.
-
Really interesting. Would you be able to share with us the URLs of your site and the forums it's at?
Edit: I found this video at in which Matt Cutts suggests that they don't use it as a signal, although it is a few years old now.
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
-
Keep getting "/feed" broken links in Google Search Console
Hey guys, I'm having an issue for the past few months. I keep getting "/feed" broken links in Google Search Console (screenshot attached). The site is a WordPress site using the YoastSEO plugin for on-page SEO and sitemap. Has anyone else experienced this issue? Did you fix it? How should I redirect these links? s7elXMy
Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
What is Too Many On-Page Links?
in campaigns i see " Too Many On-Page Links " what is this ? can anyone please tell me ?
Technical SEO | | constructionhelpline0 -
Google Published Date - Does Google Lie?
Here's the scenario. I create a page called "ABC" and it gets published and found by Google lets say on the 13th of April. on the 15th (or 14th) i decide to update the URL, page Title, and content. (Redirect old URL to new URL as well) Will Google still show this page as being published on the 13th? or would it update the publish date according to the new URL? Greg | | | | | | <a id="question_reply-to-question-36769-description_codeblock" class="mceButton mceButtonEnabled mce_codeblock" style="color: #000000; border: 1px solid #f0f0ee; margin: 0px 1px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: transparent; cursor: default; vertical-align: baseline; width: 20px; border-collapse: separate; display: block; height: 20px;" title="Create Code Block" tabindex="-1"></a>Create Code Block | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Added data to links
Hello I am in the process of cleaning a site and getting less pages cached. it is a magento site and I was wondering what is your advice fo pages that get this padded to the link ?material=139&price=10%2C12 accept the obvious canonical? thanks
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Settle an argument re first links from a page? Anyone?
If we accept "the first link from a page to another is the one that transfers anchor text and PR" - does that then apply just the same for internal linking as it does with linking from domain to domain?
Technical SEO | | AidanMcCarthy0 -
How is link juice passed to links that appear more than once on a given page?
For the sake of simplicity, let's say Page X has 100 links on it, and it has 100 points of link juice. Each page being linked to would essentially get 1 point of link juice. Right? Now let's say Page X links to Page Y 3 times and Page Z 5 times, and every other link only once. Does this mean that Page Y would get 3 "link juice points" and Page Z would get 5? Note: I know that the situation is much more complex than this, such as the devaluation of footer links, etc, etc, etc. However, I am interested to hear peoples take on the above scenario, assuming all else is equal.
Technical SEO | | bheard0