best way to hide links from google?

[serious]

I have read that google is attempting to read javascript, does anyone know how good they have gotten at it, if at all?

Whats the best method to make a link not readable by google but perfectly normal to the user?

not trying to be shady just blocking my affiliate link leakages and what not.

[Hexed]

Cloaking using the htaccess file and USER_AGENT would work just nicely. I don't think anyone would get upset if you were actually "removing" links from Google instead of "adding" like more blackhats would.

Now - question is if Google automatically detects cloaking or is it just found by whining competition? No idea.

Hexed

[James]

[QUOTE=Hexed]I don't think anyone would get upset if you were actually "removing" links from Google instead of "adding" like more blackhats would.[/QUOTE]
I disagree because this would be a very effective way of getting away with having reciprical links treated by Google as non-reciprical links (which are more valuable).

While I have heard of server-side cloaking working most effectively, I personally stick to forward thinking and remember what you get away with today, you may well get caught on tomorrow.

Use a dynamic redirect page (e.g. /redirect.asp?url=www.external.com) and exclude this is in your robots.txt
Doesn't guarantee Google won't index it (I heard stories of the robots.txt not being respected), but this is a safer bet and you will know from your logs if it's not worked.

[serious]

I am not looking for any way of cloaking links or any other unethical seo, I just want to not leak out pr on affiliate links and the like.

I figured javascript would be the best way to do this, but maybe i will have to look into the redirect thing.

[Cecil]

My impression is that Internal and External PR are treated separately for a site. So you can have outbound links and it won't affect the distribution of internal PR throughout your site.

Anyone else want to hit on this point? I think it's very relevant to what Serious is getting at.

[seo guy]

here is example of how to totally mask an Href using CSS

<span class="dynlink" onclick="window.location='http://www.yourdomain.com'" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.yourdomain.com'; this.style.color='red';this.style.textDecoration='underline'" onmouseout="window.status=''; this.style.color='#0000CC'; this.style.textDecoration='underline'">Anchor Text</span> -

And in my CSS file:

.dynlink {
color: #0000CC;
text-decoration: underline;
cursor: pointer;
cursor: hand;
}

[jagan]

[QUOTE=Cecil]My impression is that Internal and External PR are treated separately for a site. So you can have outbound links and it won't affect the distribution of internal PR throughout your site.

Anyone else want to hit on this point? I think it's very relevant to what Serious is getting at.[/QUOTE]


I am not agree with you. Suppose if you are give outbound link form Page A to web site X and you have nothing in the return from X Website, then you are going to lost some PR of the page A and it will also effect internal Pages PR of your web site.

[seo guy]

Jagan is correct Cecil, PR is considered page to page and its propagation is not dependent nor effected by whether a link from one page to another goes to another domain or an internal page.

[owlcroft]

There are apparently divides in the SEO community on whether one "bleeds" one's own PR through the giving of links. The original paper by the Googlettes surely suggests as much.

In any event, the easy and sure-fire way to hide outbound links is to send them to an intermediate php referrer script (which needs to be all of two lines long) and then block that via robots.txt.

<plug>

As it happens, I have a free toy named "Via" (http://seo-toys.com/link-hide-seo-toy/via-toy.shtml), which does just that. It is neither terribly original nor terribly complex, but it comes with some instructions, so there you are.

</plug>

Google is said to be getting smart about reading JS, including supposedly blocked includes. But so long as they honor the robots protocol, the referrer method should be bulletproof. And it allows you to pick and choose which links you will hide and which you won't. (Ethics demands that links be returned, and some sites just deserve a link.)

[seo guy]

yeah Thats why I posted the comment on CSS OWl, I have seen many instances of Gbot parsing and following Javascript and CGI Jump so I think the CSS is most efficient. We had the debate VIA IM on the php referrer script and Im still not convinced that it gets discounted via the dangling links hypothesis, but meh thats another thread ;)

[disgust]

do you regularly use this to "hide" links, seo guy?

I never figured something like that would be worthwhile