Does Yelp pass link juice?
-
This is probably a profoundly obvious question, but I can't seem to find an explicit answer on the internet, so I'll ask it here:
Yelp's links out to local business websites are not nofollow'd, but they go through a javascript-based redirect. My understanding is that javascript redirected links do not pass link juice, so a link from a yelp profile will not directly impact my page authority; however, it looks like yelp does use nofollow judiciously for internal links, so I don't understand why they would allow follow for these "useless" outbound links.
Do yelp's javascript-redirected links pass link juice?
-
Just curious - where do you see the JS redirects? I'm seeing server-side redirects, but the interesting thing is that the return a 200 (not a 301 or 302), which could suggest they pass link-juice.
My gut sense is that Miriam's right - they probably mask direct link-juice but are still very valuable as a citation, especially for local search.
-
Hello Tyler!
What an interesting question! Not one I've seen asked before and I don't have an authoritative answer for you. I did find a couple of mentions of this out on the web.
Here's one from http://www.tastyplacement.com/6-best-free-local-business-directories-for-backlinks-customers-hits
4. Yelp.com. Yelp is popular (a fair number of visitors) and its pages rank well in the search engines. So, a listing here might earn you some supplemental results in a Google search. It’s review-based, and there are a lot of “interactive” features you’ll want to skip if you just want to list your business. Valuable and free. One limitation: Yelp does not give dofollow (a link that passes valuable pagerank to the target site) backlinks.
And a discussion at Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/jburq/acquiring_citations_from_directories_yelp_hotfrog/
I tend to think of the value of sites like Yelp as being in their quality as a citation and their ability to host conversation (hopefully positive) about your business. I am going to ask one of our super SEOs to step in and give you an opinion on this. It's a very good question!
Miriam
-
Oficially, no it does not pass link juice, BUT google is smart enough so you will gain smth from this link. + you can get some good traffic. It's always good to have your business listed on sites like yelp.
-
Not a clue. I'd guess they're nofollowing the internal links to better architect what internal pages are ranking, but maybe they intended profile links to pass juice, and implementation wasn't what they'd thought it be.
-
Thanks for the answer! Can you think of any reason why yelp doesn't nofollow these links? They seem to nofollow a lot of links within their own site, so it seems strange that these links are not nofollow'd.
-
I'm 99.9% positive the answer is no, they do not pass link juice. JS-redirected links are all hinky like that.
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
-
Unnatural links from your site
Hi, 24 February got this penalty message in Google webmaster tool. Google detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links on pages on this site. This may be the result of selling links that pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. Already removed all the link on the blog and sent reconsideration request to Google spam team. But request is rejected. Please help me on this or share link with me on same case. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Links in Webmaster Tools that aren't really linking to us
I've noticed that there is a domain in WMT that Google says is linking to our domain from 173 different pages, but it actually isn't linking to us at all on ANY of those pages. The site is a business directory that seems to be automatically scraping business listings and adding them to hundreds of different categories. Low quality crap that I've disavowed just in case. I have hand checked a bunch of the pages that WMT is reporting with links to us by viewing source, but there's no links to us. I've also used crawlers to check for links, but they turn up nothing. The pages do, however, mention our brand name. I find this very odd that Google would report links to our site when there isn't actually links to our site. Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?
Technical SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Best practice for multiple domain links
A site i'm working on has about 12 language domains - .es, it, .de etc. On each page of every domain the header has links to every homepage. At the moment these are all set to no-follow as an initial step to stop potential link profile issues spreading around. Moving forward i'm not totally sure how to handle these links. On one side I see and agree that no-follow is not necessary, but do-follow is just filtering out and weakening link juice. What is the best way to handle this scenario?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Linking to unrelated content
Hi, Just wanted to know, linking to unrelated content will harm the site? I know linking to unrelated content is not good. But wanted to know weather any chances are there or not. I have a site related to health and the other one related to technology. The technology site is too good having PR 6 and very good strong backlinks. And the health related site has very much tough competition, So i wanted to know may be i could link this health site to technology site to get good link from it. Can you suggest me about it. waiting for your replies...
Technical SEO | | Dexter22387874870 -
Link title with anchor text
Will there be any additional SEO value if we add link title in addition to anchor text.? Can you compare link title with image title? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | gmk15670 -
Affiliate links
Is there a best practice for linking out to affiliates URLs post panda? I know some believe it can be a factor.
Technical SEO | | PeterM220