Odd backlinks from yahoo news
-
Can anyone explain what this backlink does? The original content was syndicated on Yahoo News from Mashable. At first glance it appears to be a straight up follow link from Yahoo to Mashable, but upon closer inspection I saw this in the code.
went public just three months ago
Here's the article on yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-zynga-generates-12-revenue-them-175509319.html
I've rarely seen backlinks from yahoo for any content partner let alone follow links. The us.lrd.yahoo.com in the hyperlink makes me highly suspicious.
-
Thanks Michael! That was quite insightful : )
-
Hey Mike Fan,
What you're looking at there is called a data reference link (that ylt= attribute gives it away). In short, it is indeed a followed link and would pass any authority you'd expect from a plain old link. The big difference is in how it's used.
The _ylt type variables are data packets. They contain specific base64 encoded data. The link could be a login, referential data, tracking data, or even spyware. The main point is someone making that link wants to keep track of who's doing what with it. On large sites, it's actually more common than you'd think for tracking purposes.
In short, this link is probably fine, even if it's a little scary looking in the page source. When a site that famously no=follows uses a followed link, you better believe they're going to track what's going on when they do.
Mike
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
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
Why would I suddenly start seeing a spike in hits from particular bots (specifically rogerbot, google, bing, and yahoo)?
We have seen consistent network traffic over the past month, then starting yesterday, huge spikes in hits (hits as in crawls to pages causing an increase in megabytes downloaded) started coming in from Rogerbot, Google, Bing, and Yahoo. A specific example from Rogerbot is as follows: rogerbot/1.1+(http://moz.com/help/guides/search-overview/crawl-diagnostics#more-help,+rogerbot-crawler+pr2-crawler-104@moz.com) Useragent from the bot IP address: 54.226.73.52 Domain / hostname: ec2-54-226-73-52.compute-1.amazonaws.com Physical location: United States flag United States, VA, Ashburn We've have thought about doing a crawl-delay to prevent these bots from hitting us so hard, but that still doesn't help us answer why this even started in the first place. Any clue on what may be going on here?
Technical SEO | | eTundra0 -
Google News Sitemap
Currently for our website Thinkdigit, we are using a rss sitemap (http://www.thinkdigit.com/google_sitemap/news_rss.php) for news. Please let me know is this the right format or we should use xml format only. Also we have lost a huge chunk of traffic from news search, Previously it used to be around 10,000 visit from google news, now it is just 300 visit per day.
Technical SEO | | 9dot90 -
If I reply to a PR7 blog does it create a backlink?
Hi, I'm going through my blog spam shite and I've come across some PR7 questions, if I reply which I think they want me to, does it create a backlink trust? I have a few PR4's from SEO companies outside the UK also, will this help my trust? Thanks Mark http://www.thehairroom.co.uk/blog
Technical SEO | | smoki6660 -
Removing irrelevant items from Google News?
A client wants to know if it's possible to get Google to remove stories from Google News feeds if those stories have nothing to do with the client? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JamesAMartin0 -
Google News URL Format
Hi, We are currently redesigning our gaming website (www.totallygn.com) and one of our main goals is to get listed by Google News in future. Looking at the Google News URL requirements "The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits." How does the above affect SEO structure? I was planning on using a format such as www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review how would this compare to something like? www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review234 Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon0 -
Article Marketing for Backlinks
Ok I know there's a lot of information already on here about Article Marketing for SEO, but I need to know if anyone here has recently ran an article campaign successfully? Correct me if I am wrong, but submitting the same article to a bunch (more than 1-2) article directories for back links is a bad idea. Right? Maybe it worked in 2006, but now even the site themselves (Article Directories) are just so polluted with spam from the pass that, that Even if you submitted a genuine article.. it would still not give you as much Juice because the sites themselves are considered spamy. Looking at Alexa's ranking of Ezine Articles kind of proves that, after Panda Hit. The bottom line is, my boss says I have to start writing articles for backlinks. He wanted me to blast them across multiple directories. So I need to be absolutely certain that where I place these articles will have Quality impact on our sites SEO. Tips, Advice, Links, THANKS! We are a prominent ecommerce site in the food service industry.
Technical SEO | | Burkett.com0 -
Backlinks pointing to the B page of an A/B test.
To rel-canonical or to 301, that is the question. We're frequently running an A/B split test on our home page to optimize conversion. As a result about 10,000 backlinks to our homepage point to the B page. (If we're running a test when a blog or newspaper checks us out, there's a 50% chance they're diverted to the B page. So when they copy our home page URL, they're unknowingly copying the B page link.) We can't contact all of these sites and ask for them to change their links. A lot of the links are from big organizations that aren't interested in tweaking the links of old articles. So should we rel-canonical or 301 the B page? We consistently use the same URL for our B page tests, so we'd only have to 'fix' one page. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | JoeNYC0