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.
Does Google follow links inside a <noscript>tag?</noscript>
-
I'm looking at making an embedable calculator and asking users to embed it to their website. I had the idea of using javascript to include the calculator which would also conatain a text link back to my site in order to gain some back links.
If it's possible Google won't see the link (as they may not execute the javascript), is it safe to place the link in the
<noscript>tag? If so, Will it be indexed and will Page Rank be passed?</span></p> <p>Thanks in advance for your answers. </p> <p>Anthony</p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span></p></noscript>
-
Hi there,
Google is getting better at crawling Javascript and pulling URLs out, so there's a fair chance it will count anyway.
Links in the
<noscript>tag are crawled, but make sure that the noscript content is well-suited for a user with Javascript disabled. Do not turn it into a list of links :)</p></noscript>
-
If its hidden, it won't be counted as a link. The user/viewer must be able to see the actual link and the robot has to be able to crawl it.
I believe WMT has a crawling option to show you what the robot sees on your page. You can perhaps create a draft page on your own site and use WMT to see if the page is crawled and if the link is seen.
-
Thanks for your answer.
This is currently just an idea so we are unable to test it as yet.
We know that the link would be visible if a user didn't have JavaScript enabled, therefore Google should see also the link. The question is would Google recognise this as a legitimate link or would it treat it as a hidden link and therefore give it less priority.
Cheers
-
The bottom line is that the link is rendered at the load of the webpage. So if you already have someone with the calculator on their webpage, see if your link is there and has the ability to be clicked. If so, it should be counted as a backlink.
As long as the link is rendered at the end, and the HTML code shows the link in HTML, it should be counted as a backlink.
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
-
NO Meta description pulling through in SERP with react website - Requesting Indexing & Submitting to Google with no luck
Hi there, A year ago I launched a website using react, which has caused Google to not read my meta descriptions. I've submitted the sitemap and there was no change in the SERP. Then, I tried "Fetch and Render" and request indexing for the homepage, which did work, however I have over 300 pages and I can't do that for every one. I have requested a fetch, render and index for "this url and linked pages," and while Google's cache has updated, the SERP listing has not. I looked in the Index Coverage report for the new GSC and it says the urls and valid and indexable, and yet there's still no meta description. I realize that Google doesn't have to index all pages, and that Google may not also take your meta description, but I want to make sure I do my due diligence in making the website crawlable. My main questions are: If Google didn't reindex ANYTHING when I submitted the sitemap, what might be wrong with my sitemap? Is submitting each url manually bad, and if so, why? Am I simply jumping the gun since it's only been a week since I requested indexing for the main url and all the linked urls? Any other suggestions?
Web Design | | DigitalMarketingSEO1 -
Do I need to 301 redirect www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com/ ?
So, interestingly enough, the Moz crawler picked up my index.html file (homepage) and reported duplicate content, of course. But, Google hasn't seemed to index the www.domain.com/index.html version of my homepage, just the www.domain.com version. However, it looks like I do have links going specifically to www.domain.com/index.html and I want to make sure those are getting counted towards my overall domain strength. Is it necessary to 301 redirect in the scenario described above?
Web Design | | Small_Business_SEO0 -
Should i not use hyphens in web page titles? Google Penalty for hyphens?
all the page titles in my site have hyphens between the words like this: http://texas.com/texas-plumbers.html I have seen tests where hyphenated domain names ranked lower than non hyphenated domain names. Does this mean my pages are being penalized for hyphens or is this only in the domain that it is penalized? If I create new pages should I not use hyphens in the page titles when there are two or more words in the title? If I changed all my page titles to eliminate the hyphens, I would lose all my rankings correct? My site is 12 years old and if I changed all these titles I'm guessing that each page would be thrown in the google sandbox for several months, is this true? Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Redirects (301/302) versus errors (404)
I am not able to convincingly decide between using redirects versus using 404 errors. People are giving varied opinions. Here are my cases 1. Coding errors - we put out a bad link a. Some people are saying redirect to home page; the user at least has something to do PLUS more importantly it does NOT hurt your SEO ranking. b. Counter - the page ain't there. Return 404 2. Product removed - link1 to product 1 was out there. We removed product1; so link1 is also gone. It is either lying in people's bookmarks, OR because of coding errors we left it hanging out at some places on our site.
Web Design | | proptiger0 -
Should I use the google mod_pagespeed in my apache server?
Anyone already use it? There is some speed benefit? http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/module.html
Web Design | | Naghirniac0