Do you get penalized for cloaking the nofollow attribute in reciprocal link?
-
Is it bad to present a link to SE robots as a no-follow link, while normal users see it as a do-follow link?
-
I did read all, and my comments summed up my thoughts.
You are being deceptive and trying to justify it by saying you are cleaning up the web.
When Ryan rightly said that presenting one think to search engines and another to everyone else, you dishonestly put words in his mouth with some mumblings about a third party website owner, you don’t see able to cope with what he did say and instead pretended he stated something else.How do you reconcile these 2 statements?
Everything but the tag remains unaltered,
I provide EXACTLY THE SAME information on a page to both users and SE RobotsAre you presenting the same, or are you altering the tag?
And what is this decoy
“I am neither hiding my affiliate links nor cloaking ads to improve CTR.”That’s not what he said. He was talking of your no-follow trick you asked about; again you seem to be un-able to cope with the facts.
Putting words into someone’s mouth is dishonest and childish. Is this something you have done all your life?
Next time you want to make stupid comments read the guidelines first.
-
I never said that i am doing this. I wanted to start a mini-discussion.
Next time you want to comment, make sure you have read everything thoroughly and stick on topic. There is no need to comments that are not associated with the topic. Thank you.
-
I dont think you are being honest with yourself, us or the people you have reciprocal links with.
-
You are being deceptive.
And by the way, you still leak link juice wether it is no-follow or not. The only difference is where the link juice goes. To the other site, or up in smoke.
-
My only goal in responding was to answer your question. I am sharing with you the information that Google, the primary search engine for the US and Europe, has shared. I am not debating my personal views on the topic, but simply sharing how Google views the issue. If the explanation I offered helps in any way, then I am glad. If you disagree with it, that is certainly your right.
There is no debate here. You are clearly cloaking, it is a violation and since it is blatant and intentional, I would suggest it is a severe violation. Your beliefs, my beliefs, your intentions, etc are all completely irrelevant and will never be considered on any level by anyone. The only time they will even be heard is after your site is penalized and you are completing the Reconsideration Request explaining why you violated Google's policies. Even then, they are unlikely to be directly responded to.
Good Luck.
-
"Presenting the links as nofollow to search engines in no way contributes to cleaner, better SERPs" - are you aware of the fact that no-follow links do not pass the link juice?
So, website owner who is buying/exchanging links with another website is NOT growing their links naturally and hence, according to Google guidelines, every link should have a no-follow attribute.
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings": i am not trying to improve my search engine rankings.
"Robbing a bank" - ?????
Who am i trying to rob? I provide EXACTLY THE SAME information on a page to both users and SE Robots. I am neither hiding my affiliate links nor cloaking ads to improve CTR.
-
You are welcome to other opinions, but if they differ they are wrong. There are relatively few hard facts in SEO but you have clearly touched upon a basic one.
Quality guidelines - basic principles
-
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
-
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Some examples of cloaking include:
- Serving different content to search engines than to users.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
If you go through with your actions, it is pure cloaking which is a highly intentional and deceptive act. Your words about your honorable intent are absolutely not valid by any reasonable means. Presenting the links as nofollow to search engines in no way contributes to cleaner, better SERPs. Even if they did, it would be like robbing a bank, giving the money away and then when you are arrested stating you were just trying to help society. You may disagree with the analogy but it is actually pretty good. As a webmaster you contribute by following the rules and guidelines, not breaking them.
-
-
Everything but the tag remains unaltered, i am not feeding SE robots with different texts, links or whatever.
Thank you for your answer and i am looking forward to more opinions
And oh, about the reason: I am just wondering if we get penalized for providing search engines valuable information and contributing towards the cleaner, better SERPs.
-
Any time you intentionally target search engines and show them different content then normal users, it is cloaking and you can be penalized for the action.
I cannot think of any reason to perform such an action unless you are trying to deceive your linking partners.
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
-
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
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.0 -
Internal link text
Hi With internal links, should I make sure to always use the same anchor text im trying to rank the page for? For example im having a tidy up and have realised im linking to the same page in multiple blog posts using different anchor text. Whats the rule of thumb here? Thanks Chris
On-Page Optimization | | mrcsleonard1 -
Still getting 404 after re-directs
Hi Guys, I have joined SEO moz yesterday and ran a report and saw that I needed to redirect some old Urls - I have done this but still get the 404s. Download report here: http://optimise-website-marketing.com/report.csv You can see from the report that the following are redirected to the homepage but still show up as 404s on the page. Examples: http://www.optimise-website-marketing.com/1-site-for-all/ http://www.optimise-website-marketing.com/what-is-cro/ Many thanks Matt
On-Page Optimization | | Matt-J0 -
Internal Linking Question(s)
Is it unwise to link internally to a page more than once on the homepage. I am reading that it is considered spammy. I am also reading that it passes PR twice to the internal page instead of just once... Which is it? Is there a way to stop passing PR to the "contact us" page. I watched an older video that Matt Cutts suggested a nofollow. Now I read that this strategy is a no no? Which is it? Thanks! 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
Quickest Way to get indexed?
We would like to index a new site on all major search engines. What is the quickest way to do so?
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall0 -
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 | | Bandicoot0 -
Alt attributes same as jpg name and keywords?
Hi everyone, Quick question: Is it better to have your jpg name and alt text slightly different to your keywords for that particular page, or is it better to have them slightly differently? At the minute I'm doing them all with a variation on the keyphrase I want to optimize for (long tail and all that...). Any input much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CMoore850