Hidden links in badges using javascript?
-
I have been looking at a strategy used by a division of Tripadvisor called Flipkey. They specialize in vacation home rentals and have been zooming up in the rankings over the past few months. One of the main off-page tactics that they have been using is providing a badge to property managers to display on their site which links back.
The issue I have is that it seem to me that they are hiding a link which has keyword specific anchor text by using javascript. The site I'm looking at offers vacation rentals in Tamarindo (Costa Rica). http://www.mariasabatorentals.com/
Scroll down and you'll see a Reviews badge which shows reviews and a link back to the managers profile on Flipkey.
**However, **when you look at the source code for the badge, this is what I see:
Find Tamarindo Vacation Rentals on FlipKey
Notice that there is a link for "tamarindo vacation rentals" in the code which only appears when JS is turned off in the browser.
I am relatively new to SEO so to me this looks like a black hat tactic. But because this is Tripadvisor, I have to think that that I am wrong. Is this tactic allowed by Google since the anchor text is highly relevant to the content? And can they justify this on the basis that they are servicing users with JS turned off?
I would love to hear from folks in the Moz community on this. Certainly I don't want to implement a similar strategy only to find out later that Google will view it as cloaking. Sure seems to be driving results for Flipkey!
Thanks all. For the record, the Moz community is awesome. (Can't wait to start contributing once I actually know what I'm doing!)
-
Thanks Carson. I would tend to agree were it not for the fact that Tripadvisor is so adept at SEO. Not sure how to rationalize this behavior alongside their reputation. Assumed that I was missing something...
-
It's cloaking, plain and simple - showing one thing to the search engines and another to the user. The people embedding these widgets may think they're just promoting their own profiles, but unwittingly they're telling Google that they endorse a search page.
Don't tell me it's for (the .1% of) users with their JavaScript turned off. If that were the case, either the widget would also include the commercial link or the JS-disabled version would include the profile link.
While Google's algorithm tends to take it easier on sites with established link profiles, this sort of thing may justify manual action. Not only is it a risky tactic, but the intent-swapping implementation show very bad faith.
I'd advise any site owner not to use the badge, as a manual quality reviewer might mistake it for cloaking on the part of the publisher. Eventually, these links will either be devalued or outright penalized, as they're in direct and blatant violation of Google's terms of service.
-
I haven't looked at flipkey yet, if you looked at my badges though you can see a different anchor text is created each time and points to internal pages, which may not work for all businesses, we are all long tail. That being said, the way they were generated (silly search process) was not was was asked for and a perfect example of dev delivering something completely different, as a result of the generation process they have not been very successful, but the final code that is generated is good SEO.
I would use different anchor texts for each badge and not point to the homepage, point to a LP instead so you can 404 the page (which drops the links pointing to your site automatically by changing the URL) if you point to the homepage you'll need to contact webmasters and request takedowns prior to reconsideration request if you get hit.
-
Check out the "How much is my site worth?" sites - They usually give you a widget to embed once you "evaluate" your site worth.
-
Thanks Oleg! I too don't see it as a bad thing, but all that really matters of course is how G sees it.
Do you know of any other examples in which badges are used in this manner?
-
Thanks Irving! Are you implying that a small number of badges (ie. <10) with the same anchor text won't hurt them? In almost all cases, the anchor text will be long tail and not be overdone.
I took a look at Vitals and how you generate badges using the doctors name as anchor text. This is also very long tail. Do you see this as analogous to how Flipkey is using badges?
-
since badges often go globally on sites they're probably going to hurt themselves and get penalized for that anchor text since it will be overdone.
-
Embedding links into widgets (especially keyword rich, hidden links) is considered a link scheme by Google. TripAdvisor will not be penalized (at least algorithmically) because they have a very strong link profile. A small site may be hit with penguin for these actions.
Manually, G may or may not decide to penalize them. Personally, I don't think its a bad thing. They are providing a service and show a link that would allow someone to get more info in case their JS is off (as you mentioned).
If you were to make a widget, I would link back with your brand name. It can be an excellent way to build links as long as you do it right.
Cheers,
Oleg
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 inbound links message from Google Webmaster Tools!
Hi Everyone, I just got this message from GWT(image below) This is probably a penguin Penalty. What is clear is I have to find the best and most efficient way to tackle this issue. We will probably lose tons of traffic in the next couple of weeks so I would like to get the best suggestions and maybe a guideline on how to do this in the most effective way! Thank you! 1a0X2M2a1h0A
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Link Juice Inquiry
Hello, So I have a website (example.com). I have an ajax pop-up (example.com/#example) that I am receiving a bunch of links to. Since this pop-up (example.com/#example) is on my homepage, are these links giving juice to the homepage, or this pop-up, or both?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community 😉
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adamlcasey
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you? We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd. So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab. There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings) Their links are made up of: Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc) Profile page links Low quality Press Release sites Classified ad sites Bookmarking sites Article Marketing sites Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include: t-shirts sports news online marketing anti aging law christian guitars computers juke boxes Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places. So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them. As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them! So what steps would you take next?0 -
Benefits of having outbound links
Are there any strengths (benefits) in having outbound links within the site regarding SEO? If linking to reputable sites, would that help increase our SEO strength or does that only work if they links back to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebRiverGroup1 -
Negative SEO and when to use to Dissavow tool?
Hi guys I was hoping someone could help me on a problem that has arisen on the site I look after. This is my first SEO job and I’ve had it about 6 months now. I think I’ve been doing the right things so far building quality links from reputable sites with good DA and working with bloggers to push our products as well as only signing up to directories in our niche. So our backlink profile is very specific with few spammy links. Over the last week however we have received a huge increase in backlinks which has almost doubled our linking domains total. I’ve checked the links out from webmaster tools and they are mainly directories or webstat websites like the ones below | siteinfo.org.uk deperu.com alestat.com domaintools.com detroitwebdirectory.com ukdata.com stuffgate.com | We’ve also just launched a new initiative where we will be producing totally new and good quality content 4-5 times a week and many of these new links are pointing to that page which looks very suspicious to me. Does this look like negative Seo to anyone? I’ve read a lot about the disavow tool and it seems people’s opinions are split on when to use it so I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether to use it or not? It’s easy for me to identify what these new links are, yet some of them have decent DA so will they do any harm anyway? I’ve also checked the referring anchors on Ahrefs and now over 50% of my anchor term cloud are totally unrelated terms to my site and this has happened over the last week which also worries me. I haven’t seen any negative impact on rankings yet but if this carries on it will destroy my link profile. So would it be wise to disavow all these links as they come through or wait to see if they actually have an impact? It should be obvious to Google that there has been a huge spike in links so then the question is would they be ignored or will I be penalised. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Richard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_9950 -
Google-backed sites' link profiles
Curious what you SEO people think of the link profiles of these (high-ranking) Google-backed UK sites: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.startupdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.lawdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.marketingdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.itdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.taxdonut.co.uk Each site has between 40k and 50k inlinks counted in OSE. However, there are relatively few linking root domains in each case: 273 for marketingdonut 216 for startupdonut 90 for lawdonut 53 for itdonut 16 for taxdonut Is there something wrong with the OSE data here? Does this imply that the average root domain linking to the taxdonut site does so with 2857 links? The sites have no significant social media stats. The sites are heavily inter-linked. Also linked from the operating business, BHP Information Solutions (tagline "Gain access to SMEs"). Is this what Google would think of as a "natural" link profile? Interestingly, they've managed to secure links on quite a few UK local authority resources pages - generally being the only commercial website on those pages.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seqal0 -
I've done some link building on my website... why is google showing this?
Hi guys, it seems Google is going crazy as always, basically sometimes i'm ranked first page sometimes i'm not there, not sure if it's because of my link building and Google is indexing the links. At the moment in IE i'm top 3-4 for this keyword however the Title tag is not what I set it to be it's basically taking the product name then adding something after it. (I know google sometimes changes to what they want if they feel its more relevant but it isn't in this case) Not sure if this is normal for my keyword to keep appearing then dissapearing in Google. I noticed in FF my keyword isn't there but in IE it is. I've logged out of my Google account deleted all history/cookies etc. Even checked on my friends computer. Hope this makes sense and i'm not going crazy!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | InkCartridgesFast0 -
Are there tools out there to determine when a link linked to your site? I want to know when a link farm was done a site.
In Webmaster Tools I discovered that a client of mine with signed up for or hired another company to get links. The links are poor quality and from other countries, so it looks like a link farm was done. I want to know when they links were linked to the site, and not sure how to find that information out. Does anyone know how to find this out?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0