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Hello all,
I’ve invented the following nofollow alternative:
[url]http://4nf.org/nofollow-alternative/
What do you think?
Thanks in advance and kind regards
[code=html]<an href="www.facebook.com">Facebook</an>[/code]
No, it will not help. What you're doing is trying to serve up different content to Google then to your users. That's definitely against Google's terms of service and is a great way to get banned.
There's nothing wrong with outbound links. If you don't want a site to get credit for the link to their site if you are concerned it is spam or otherwise low quality nofollow is exactly what you want. If you're trying to hide these links because you think linking to other sites is bad then you're greatly misinformed. This is doubly so if you are doing it for the sake of PageRank. Outbound links can be a postive ranking factor. Plus linking to other sites is an important tool for search engines to determine what is quality content and what isn't. By breaking this sytem you're breaking web and making search worse for everybody.
Stop sweating the small stuff and start focusing on what matters : quality content. If you spent as much time creating good content as you did manipulating the search results or chasing PageRank you'd have a website that would rank well naturally.[/QUOTE]
.. it is of course very important that the search engine doesn't have a hope in figuring out whether this is a link or not.[/QUOTE]
"They've each got a myriad of engineers working on algorithms to sift through and categorize the web in the most meaningful way possible."
I would like to back-up how difficult it is for a search engine to figure that out:
The tag <an... is replaced by PHP, not JavaScript to <a... i.e. server-side!
It's virtually impossible for a search engine to figure out...[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<an href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
[code=php]var fixLinks = function() {
var links = document.getElementByTagName('a');
for (var i in links) {
if (links[i].href.substr(0, 8).toLowerCase() == '#http://') {
links[i].href = links[i].href.substr(1);
}
}
document.body.onmousemove = null;
document.body.onkeypress = null;
}
document.body.onmousemove = fixLinks;
document.body.onkeypress = fixLinks;
[/code]
I don't think my approach gets anyone blacklisted.
It's been around for a while now in different forms and I've never seen a penalty.
On the contrary, it's good for the site's PR and hence the SERPs.
Thanks for your suggestion!
I would argue that that increases the number of links counted on the page.
The search engine will have no problem in recognising these as links, which I thought was the first pre-requisite of any "nofollow alternative"...[/QUOTE]
There's no reason to worry about "blacklisting".
If I were half as critical toward your approach as you are towards mine all the time , I could easily argue:
- It increases the number of links on the page (which mine doesn't) - It is unpredictable, which way the PageRank will be forwarded, if at all
i.e. in the worst case the link is counted but the PageRank sickers into the sand because it cannot be forwarded.
Apart from that - what happens, when JavaScript is disabled?
What does the user experience?[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<a href="#http://facebook.com/whatever">facebook</a>[/CODE]
[CODE]<an href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
Alright, has anyone else got a suggestion superior to:
[CODE]<an href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
[/QUOTE]
I would like to emphasise that my alternative does not rely on JavaScript to be enabled, an advantage over all pure JavaScript alternatives.[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<an href="http://facebook.com/">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
If JS is disabled, a redirect to the PHP is issued and one clicks on a real link nevertheless[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<an href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
Hi rnd_me,
The number of <a> tags on any given page plays an important role in the PageRank algorithm for assessing the link juice given to any individual link.
[/QUOTE]
Hi rnd_me,
of course I mean <a> tags that are links at the same time, i.e. have href.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#Simplified_algorithm
-> "divided by the number L(v) of links from page v"
The number of (outgoing) links is simply the denominator of the link juice value.[/QUOTE]
are you forgetting that nofollow links would be removed from the count of total links that you're so worried about?
if i have 1000 links and all but one have a nofollow, i have one outgoing link as far as the algo is concerned. again, it's probably because the article is so dumbed-down that it doesn't even address nofollow implications.
use nofollow if you don't want votes.
[/QUOTE]
<an href="http://facebook.com/">Facebook</an >[/QUOTE]
Anyone else?
rnd me suggested tinyURL, which is neat, but hardly a real alternative to nofollow...
What is your favorite alternative to nofollow, given the algo-change in 2009...
[/QUOTE]
Or what kind of PHP substitution can I perform server side, to disguise the link:
[CODE]<an href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<a href="/redirect.php?http://www.facebook.com/"></a>[/CODE]
The point is, don't try to fool the system. If you do anything that *may* happen to fool the system, justify it with another reason but TRY to keep compatibility in mind. Don't go out of your way risking the integrity of your website just because you think it would get a few more 'clicks'[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<an href="http://facebook.com">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
[CODE]a! http://facebook.com/ Facebook[/CODE]
Ok, so nobody's too found of the approach:
[CODE]<an href="http://facebook.com">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
I've a different alternative:
[CODE]a! http://facebook.com/ Facebook[/CODE]
(to be placed at the very left of any text node)
If you had to choose between the two, which one would you prefer?[/QUOTE]
If you are going to go that far with it, why not use bbcode "[link]" style so you aren't recreating something that already exists.[/QUOTE]
<i>
</i>[link href=http://facebook.com]Facebook[/link]
reminds me of the technique used in this forum in the editor for QUOTE, CODE, HTML, PHP etc. - is it similar?[/QUOTE]
So e.g. Java also has libraries for it.
Nevertheless, just had a look at the HTML of this page.
e.g. QUOTE is expanded to a whole block of HTML.
So it's different to what I'm serving, where HTML is the input and the tags can be seen on "Show Source".
It is normal to place these tags in the mid-tier, no matter what language.
One does not need a single library.
I would regard these tags as completely platform independent, and would thus argue, it's a different cup of tea?[/QUOTE]
[CODE]<an href="http://facebook.com">Facebook</an>[/CODE]
[CODE]<text node>a! http://facebook.com/ Facebook ...</text node>[/CODE]
[CODE]<text node>a! http://facebook.com/ Facebook ...</text node>[/CODE]
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