Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads

    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.

    Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads

    On-Page Optimization
    2
    6
    1055
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • CopBlaster.com
      CopBlaster.com last edited by

      Hi,

      I have a simple question. If I want to put an image with a link to another site like a banner ad on my page, but do not want it counted by Google. Can I simply load the link and banner using jQuery onload from a separate .js file?

      The ideal result would be for Google to index a script tag instead of a link.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • CopBlaster.com
        CopBlaster.com @effectdigital last edited by

        Good Answer. I completely abandoned the banner I was thinking of using. It was from one of those directories that will list your site for free if you show their banner on your site. Their code of course had a link to them with some optimized text. I was looking for a way to display the banner without becoming a link farm for them.

        Then I just decided that I did not want that kind of thing on my site even if it is in a javascript onload event if Google is going to crawl it anyway, so I just decided not to add it.

        Then I started thinking about user generated links. How could I let people cite a source in a way that the user can click on without exposing my site to hosting spammy links. I originally used an ASP.Net linkbutton with a confirm button extender from the AJAX Control ToolKit that would display the url and ask the user if they wanted to go there. Then they would click the confirm button and be redirected. The problem was that the URL of the page was in the head part of the DOM.

        I replaced that with a feature using a modal popup that calls a javascript function when the link button is clicked. That function then makes an ajax call to a webservice that gets the link from the database. Then the javascript writes an iframe to a div in the modal's panel. The result should be the user being able to see the source without leaving the site, but a lot of sites appear to be blocking the frame by using stuff like X-Frame-Options, so I'm probably going to use a different solution that uses the modal without the iframe. I am thinking of maybe using something like curl to grab content from the page to write to the modal panel along with a clickable link. All of this of course after the user clicks the linkbutton so none of that will be in the source code when the page loads.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • effectdigital
          effectdigital last edited by

          I think what we really need to understand is, what is the purpose of hiding the link from Google? If it's to prevent the discovery of a URL or prevent the indexation of a certain page (or set of pages) - it's easier to achieve the same thing by using Meta no-index directives or wildcard-based robots.txt rules 🙂 or by simply denying Gooblebot's user-agent, access to certain pages entirely

          Is is that important to hide the link, or is it that you want to prevent access to certain URLs from within Google's SERPs? Another option is obviously to block users / sessions referred from Google (specifically) from accessing the pages. There's lots can be done, but a bit of context would be cool

          By the way, no-follow does not prevent Google from following links. It actually just stops PageRank from passing across. I know, it was named wrong

          CopBlaster.com 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • CopBlaster.com
            CopBlaster.com last edited by

            What about a form action? Where instead of an a element with a href attribute you add a form element with an action attribute to what the href would be in a link.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • CopBlaster.com
              CopBlaster.com last edited by

              Thanks for that answer. You obviously know a lot about this issue. I guess they would be able to tell if the .js script file creates an a element with a specific href attribute and then add that element to a specific div tag after the page loads.

              It sounds like it might be easier just to nofollow those links instead of going to all the trouble to redirect the .js file whenever Google Bot crawls the page. I fear that could be considered cloaking.

              Another possibility would be a an alert that requires a user interaction before grabbing a url from a database. The user would click on the link without an href, the javascript onclick fires, the javascript grabs the the url from a database, the user is asked to click a button if they want to proceed, and then the user is redirected to the external url. That should keep the external URL out of the script code.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • effectdigital
                effectdigital last edited by

                Google can crawl JavaScript and its contents, but most of the time they are unlikely to do so. In order to do this, Google has to do more than just a basic source code scrape. Like everyone else seeking to scrape data from inside of generated elements, Google has to actually check the modified source-code, after all of the scripts have run (the render) rather than the base (non-modified) source code before any scripts fire

                Google's mission is to index the web. There's no doubt that, non-rendered crawls (which do not contain the generated HTML output of scripts) can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to get a rendered snapshot of the page-code. On average I have found rendered crawling to take 7x to 10x longer than basic source scraping

                What we have found is that Google are indeed, capable of crawling generated text and links and stuff... but they won't do this all the time, or for everyone. Those resources are more precious to Google and they crawl more sparingly in that manner

                If you deployed the link in the manner which you have described, my anticipation is that Google would not notice or evaluate the link for a month or two (if you're not super popular). Eventually, they would determine the presence of the link - at which point it would be factored and / or evaluated

                I suppose you could embed the script as a link to a '.js' module, and then use Robots.txt to ban Google from crawling that particular JavaScript file. If they chose to obey that directive, the link would pretty much remain hidden from them. But remember, it's only a directive!

                If you wanted to be super harsh you could block Googlebot (user agent) from that JS file and do something like, 301 them to the homepage when they tried to access it (instead of allowing them to open and read the JS file). That would be pretty hardcore but would stand a higher chance of actually working

                Think about this kind of stuff though. It would be pretty irregular to go to such extremes and I'm not certain what the consequences of such action(s) would be

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Aaron.be

                  Landing page separate from product page

                  Hello there,  I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page.  is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir

                  On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be
                  1
                • KenW

                  Is it better to keep a glossary or terms on one page or break it up into multiple pages?

                  We have a very large glossary of over 1000 industry terms on our site with links to reference material, embedded video, etc. Is it better for SEO purposes to keep this on one page or should we break it up into multiple pages, a different page for each letter for example? Thanks.

                  On-Page Optimization | | KenW
                  0
                • doctecs

                  Link flow for multiple links to same URL

                  Hi there,
                  my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.

                  On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
                  0
                • mblsolutions

                  Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?

                  Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.

                  On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions
                  2
                • Ron_McCabe

                  Any idea how Google is doing this? Is it schematic? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/google-adds-full-restaurant-menus-to-its-search-results-pages/

                  Google is now showing menus on select searches.  Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.

                  On-Page Optimization | | Ron_McCabe
                  0
                • rsigg

                  Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?

                  I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!

                  On-Page Optimization | | rsigg
                  0
                • Bandicoot

                  Footer link to home page?

                  Quick question - is it a best practice to add a footer link on each page of a website that points back to your home page, with the anchor text being your official brand name?

                  On-Page Optimization | | Bandicoot
                  0
                • SangeetaC

                  Google Page Rank of my site has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10

                  Google Page rank of my website has been dropped after Panda Update. Can anyone help me out to tell me the possible reasons about the same. We have tried to make our website more lively and user friendly. We have indulged some graphics to make it more attractive. But it seems it backfired us. my site is http://www.myrealdata.com as well as Google page ranking of my Quickbooks hosting page has been dropped as well. It would be great if someone can help me out with expert suggestions.

                  On-Page Optimization | | SangeetaC
                  1

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.