Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does google scrape links from PDF files? do these links pass link juice?
-
Title is pretty much the whole question.
-
I made a test and it seems that yes, the links from pdf count for ranking.
The test is on my Romanian blog http://seogan.ro/link-building-pdf-urile-o-sursa-de-linkuri-test
You can find an English translation here: http://www.seogan.com/pdf-link-building
Hope it helps.
-
Yes it does according to Google tech spec http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/50/admin_crawl/Introduction.html
which specifically states if follows html links in pdf 'It follows HTML links in PDF files, Word documents, and Shockwave documents'. Google's own api docs carry more weight than a comment in a forum_._ If they are licencing this out as an application it would suggest that the same technology is available in the main engine as does Dunamis's comment about a listing in a pdf document being found in search results.
You can test for youself by publishing a pdf with a link to a info page that does not show up in any other links. Include the pdf in your sitemap but not the test page and check if it shows in googles index site:yoursite.com the next time it crawls.
This also gives some insight in an interview with Matt Cutts - http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
Eric Enge: What about PDF files?
Matt Cutts: We absolutely do process PDF files. I am not going to talk about whether links in PDF files pass PageRank. But, a good way to think about PDFs is that they are kind of like Flash in that they aren't a file format that's inherent and native to the web, but they can be very useful. In the same way that we try to find useful content within a Flash file, we try to find the useful content within a PDF file. At the same time, users don't always like being sent to a PDF. If you can make your content in a Web-Native format, such as pure HTML, that's often a little more useful to users than just a pure PDF file.
-
Google definitely does index the contents of pdf files. I found this out the hard way as I had a real estate pdf on my site that I wanted to have listed in the index, but I didn't know that the contents would be crawled. The pdf contained some listings that I was not legally allowed to advertise on my site. (It was legal for me to give someone a report with the listings in it though).
When another realtor was searching for their own listing, my pdf came up. I got in trouble. I'm ok now though.
-
Have a look at this article http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067225/Google-Does-PDF-Other-Changes it explains some of the doc library search for pdf files and Google's statement here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/picture-of-thousand-words.html.
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
-
How long does it take Google to remove links after using disavow tool?
Hi guys, So we're currently in the process of removing some of the less useful and more suspect links from our profile, and used the Google disavow tool to do so. We uploaded the .txt file to the search console on 7th July this year, 2 months ago now, and according to our most recent site crawl, the suspect links are still showing up on our link profile. Do we have any idea how long this is roughly supposed to take? The ideas I've found online are conflicting - anything from 3-4 weeks to 6-9 months. Which is it? Is there any way of fast-tracking this process? Thanks!
Link Building | | rawdog0 -
How much time does it takes for a backlink to get registered in Google? My basketball anime website has been live since start of this week and Google has not registered any backlink.
So my website https://www.animedhfa.com/basketball-anime/ about basketball Anime has shown no changes in DA or backlinks. It has been 5 days perhaps since it went live.
Link Building | | ahmad74750 -
In Google search console all of sudden a lot of backlinks have disappear at "Link To Your Site"
Hi after update in Google search console yesterday a lot of backlinks in "Link To Your Site" have disappear, before we had 43x domains now we have 12x domains linking to the site. I have checked the sites where we had link do-follow before and they are OK. Can you please tell me the reason what has gone wrong. And also please guide me in fixing the issue , Hope to hear from you soon..! URL: https://www.finanstopp.no/
Link Building | | heleneolsen3 -
Does an external link to an image file on my site help my SEO?
I found a few websites that are displaying images from my site. Curiously, they have also linked these images to the source image file on my website. I found these because Moz showed these sites in my list of backlinks. I assume that means it impacts my Domain Authority. But does this actually help me in search engines since it's not linking to a page on my site?
Link Building | | AlexLenhoff0 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
URL parameters affecting link juice
I have a couple of quirks in my online shop that I'm ironing out. One of them is adding some URL parameters to product links.ie: website.com/product.html?&cat=0&featured=Y If someone links to this URL, will I get the link juice as if it was website.com/product.html ? I have URL parameters in Webmaster Tools and robots.txt set up to ignore them so they're not in the Google index, but I have found a few websites that have linked to us using these longer URL's and I'm wondering whether to write to them and ask them if they mind changing them or not.
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
Image only badges giving link juice!?!?
I see some chatter about badges, but no clear definition. A collegue of mine instituted badges on clients website, but these badges are only an image w/ hyperlink; no textual content. He is confident that this has worked successfully before as a link building strategy, which blew my mind. I thought we needed some text, and obviously optimizes anchor text for biggest benefit. Are these simple badges helpful, or do we need some html in there!? He also routes them through bit.ly to track impressions and clicks.. does that have any effect as well? Thanks!
Link Building | | SwissNinja0