5 things that stop anchor text being passed
It’s not often I let data leak or publish results from our Labs (or the SEO programming office just behind me), but while building our SEO link Analysis Toolbar for Firefox.. James started finding weird issues while parsing a page on a wordpress blog. This was down to a wordpress plugin that allows you to cloak links to Google not in a good way either this plugin actually removes the link for Google !! This got me thinking about retesting what does and doesn’t pass Anchor text link
1 The “NO Follow”
Yep not rocket science but when was the last time you actually checked it in an SEO lab environment ? well with 99% certainty I can say that this
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>Dave Naylor</a> will not pass the “Dave Naylor” link text to the target page
2 The First link first rule
OK in the code below you can see it has 2 links, one is “Dave Naylor” and the other “UK seo”. If this code was placed on your website the Dave Naylor text link would pass Google link authority and anchor text equity helping my site rank for “Dave Naylor” but because the second link is going to the same page on the David Naylor blog I get Google link authority but I get NO help ranking for “UK Seo”. Google doesn’t carry the anchor text.
We like this guy <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>Dave Naylor</a>, Dave is a <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>UK Seo</a>
To get the benefit of both links you would have needed to the link to my site like this:
We like this guy <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>Dave Naylor</a>, Dave is a <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/blog”>UK Seo</a>
The second link is targeting another page on David Naylor. 2 things I haven’t tested which I will are :
We like this guy <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>Dave Naylor</a>, Dave is a <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/index.html“>UK Seo</a>
Where adding a index.html to the second link even though that page is a direct duplicate of the root TLD and
We like this guy Dave check out his <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk”>Home</a>, Dave is a <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk“>UK Seo</a>
The second test I need to do is when I use a common word like “home” or “for more info” will that allow the second link to pass equity I don’t think it will but I should test it anyway.
3 The Space in URL
This is a weird one and we are actually retesting this at the moment but we found that no anchor text was passed when a space was added to the URL in the href:
We like this guy <a href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk◊“>Dave Naylor/a> (◊ this is just to represent a space) very weird and odd so we are retesting !!
4 The 301 redirect
We like this guy <a href=”http://www.yoursite.co.uk/301-davenaylor”>Dave Naylor/a> where the 301-davenaylor page is just a straight 301 redirect to http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk the anchor text wasn’t passed onto davidnaylor at all 
sad days
5 The Cloaking plugin
I mentioned this at the beginning of the post and personally I think this is the most stupidest and dangerous. Two reasons, 1st one it seems that most people that use this plugin are link selling on a certain network so that network should be burnt to the ground which will knock out innocent sites as well, secondly if your not in this link selling network and have installed the plugin hey you look like you’re part of a link selling network and will get burnt in the next big “let’s tackle link sellers again” update in Google.
Dave
Dave 1140 days ago
http://www.djb31st.co.uk/The space in the URL is very strange.. Wonder if it passes JUICE and not the Anchor or passes nothing? Hard to test the JUICE flow though i guess?
Good to have another confirmation on first link first, would be interesting to see tests on what happens if the first link is in javascript. I’ve assumed the javascript link would be skipped?
Dave 1140 days ago
http://sharkseo.com301s didn’t pass on anchor text?? I haven’t tested that in at least a few months but last time I did I found the anchor text definitely passed. Maybe it’s a recent change – I’ll retest and let you know if I see anything different.
Richard Hearne 1140 days ago
http://www.redcardinal.ie301 is an odd one – how was this tested?
Alex Moss 1140 days ago
http://alex-moss.co.ukInstead of the 301 redirect, hashing has been heard of to work, although not tested it properly:
link1
link2
Kevin Pike 1140 days ago
http://www.kevin-pike.comOne reason the “first link” hype/myth makes more sense to me now.
I learned something today! Thanks Mr. Naylor
Tim 1140 days ago
http://timhuegdon.comI suspect the space in the URL issue is due to the fact that a space isn’t a valid URL character.
The browser automatically fixes the issue when the link is clicked and navigates successfully, but the fact that the anchor text isn’t passed suggests the search engine spiders still class it as an invalid URL.
I’d be really interested in reading about your follow up research on that.
Tony Spencer 1140 days ago
I’m also not sure about the 301 not passing. Last I checked, it does.
Chris Gedge 1140 days ago
http://www.further.co.ukWith reference to the 301 thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LR8H8pn1M – from @RichardShove
Carla Marshall 1140 days ago
http://www.sorbetdigital.comYay, unicorns! *does happy dance*
Marc 1140 days ago
http://www.matanmedia.comDave nice post!
We also tested 301s passing anchor text a while back with the same results that Dave from SharkSEO mentioned above.
Very interested to hear more on this.
DaveN 1140 days ago
@Chris a) that a year old video, and matt say typically anchor text does flow though a 301 redirect, but we don’t promise that will always happen.
he them goes on about trust of and links and the trust of redirects… in the last 12 months the big move for merchants to push affiliate links via 301 redirects, used to yield truly awesome results now it’s just great results
if you link to a page get that page index with the anchor text link in place then 301 you can pass anchor text, that not what we did, we did a clean page with the redirect in place already then link to that, no text link equity was passed, I can re test, but i think the merchant / affiliate links have soiled the landscape a little
Rolf B 1140 days ago
http://www.rolfbroer.nlDave Naylor/a>
woops, you’re missing an < over there ( @ ) no wonder it didn’t work
Glenn Gillen 1140 days ago
http://glenngillen.com/I’m instantly skeptical of anyone that provides numbers as statements of fact about a topic, without providing the methodology they used to reach those numbers (and the subsequent conclusion). It makes it impossible to rule out an innocent error in approach, and thus makes the conclusions meaningless.
Glenn Gillen 1140 days ago
http://glenngillen.com/I see since I posted my last comment you gave some insight to Chris, it would be great if you could fill it out a little further if only so we can verify the results ourselves. It’s not like you’d be leaking anything, you’ve given us your conclusions already which is where the useful information really lies.
Scott Hendison 1140 days ago
http://www.seoautomatic.comNo juice through a 301? Really? I knew that it’s not supposed to work forever, and Matt C. has said that it may not be passing *all* the but is it really true that it’s not passing? None?” Sad days” is true, if correct.
The hash tag idea is interesting, and actually tried it a year ago but never followed up to see if it did anything. Might have to now!.
Chris Gedge 1140 days ago
http://www.further.co.ukGood point Dave. The affiliate link nuke is maybe causing issues with normal 301s. Rubbish! Unicorns win though.
Terry Van Horne 1140 days ago
http://www.internationalwebsitebuilders.comAgree w/the comment about a space not being a legal character… in the early days spaces in urls did not work at all… why _ was used. On the 301… we had a discussion in the Seo dojo chat a few Friday’s ago and since there was a lot of difference of opinion… we contacted Google and were told it can pass juice but is not a “sure thing”. It depends… and IMO, likely doesn’t happen staright away.
imnotadoctor 1140 days ago
http://www.imnotadoctor.com@dave thanks for publishing this … hopefully people will believe you and just shut the fuck up about it.
CHeers!
le-juge 1140 days ago
http://www.seo-muscle.comThe SPACE IN URL one is very odd and I can’t wait to see the results of the next tests
DaveN 1140 days ago
@Glenn Gillen what data do you want apart from the sites involved and the anchor text used I let you have whatever data you want
rishil 1140 days ago
http://explicitly.me@glenn you serious? Do your own tests. In most cases SEO tests data cant really be published in public for fear of the sites being hurt. For example the first anchor info has been out in the public domain for a while http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
Glenn Gillen 1140 days ago
http://glenngillen.com/@DaveN the important factors that immediately spring to mind are:
- The number of sites you tested against
- Did each site test a single variable or multiples
- Were the sites already indexed
- How long between making the change and determining it had no impact
- Where did the link come from? All from the same site? All different?
- How well was the site providing the link already ranking? What was it’s PR? Was it on topic with the target site?
Depending on how tight your tin foil hat is, I suspect people would also care about whether the source and destination of the links were on the same IP, registered to the same entity, etc. Likewise for any control sites you may have used.
Rand & SEOMoz *usually* do a pretty good job at this. While I’ve often no way to know if their figures are accurate, at the end I have a reasonable understanding of their methodology and the scope of their sample size. Given sufficient time and resources I could replicate it myself.
Years of experience mean I know how I could test myself, even at the end of that though I’d have no idea if we actually took the same approach.
timothy vogel 1140 days ago
http://www.heur-r-ka.comDave, if you took a biit of time to write ina way that differed from the way that you talk, or more accurately the way a breathless 13yo boy reporting his homerun at the game last night, you might actually communicate better.
please, you seem to have something worthwhile to say, so let us read it.
punctuation counts, and one long sentence becomes incomprehensible quickly! I was interested in what you had to say, but your juvenile writing style forced me to stop. It was like listening to teenage girls argue over who said what about whom first!
Yikes. You can do better than this if you care about what you are writing!
TV
DaveN 1140 days ago
@DaveN the important factors that immediately spring to mind are:
I have access to a range of fast index highish PR sites (5 – 6) so if I link to you from this blog you would see the effect within days, on the first link first I only used 2 sites but both fast indexing and trusted sites, I tested link equity passing by just adding a link that I know
a) didn’t appear on the target site
b) return no results and no offerings in google clean slate so to speak
I recorded the time for a the site to rank for the term, that was less than 3hours then waited for the target site to rank for the term that was less than 24hrs
Then I Removed link and waited for google to clean down about 1 week.
Added two new links to the site, both pointing at the root url of the target site, again the site with the links appeared for both terms within a couple of hours and again the target site ranked within 24hr for the first keyword link but not the second link left it for a few weeks still nothing,
so I purged the results and them moved on to a next test I still have the day by day data in our tracking systems.
The best way thou is just test it yourself if you have say 10 sites if good PR and good ranking have a play with linking cross the domain, the the tinfoil brigade we don’t get so well due to them playing the hot sun to much, it bakes the brains, the real tests are what pass equity, the 301 test was done to fine a sure method of getting power from aff’s, first link first and no follow was to make sure our press release get maximum exposure
Dave
David Whitehouse 1140 days ago
Well said @DaveN
Carla Marshall 1140 days ago
http://www.sorbetdigital.com@timothy vogel
Oh dear – pot calling kettle black? Perhaps you should take a little time to proofread your comments about grammar and punctuation before taking others to task…….
Dave, if you took a BIIT (typo) of time to write INA (typo) way that differed from the way (tautologically suspect, try using a thesaurus next time) that you talk (speak would be a better verb, no?), or more accurately (comma needed here) the way a breathless 13yo (text speak? no no no) boy reporting his homerun at the game last night, you might actually communicate better.
please (no capital letter?), you seem to have something worthwhile to say, so let us read it.
punctuation counts, (again, no capital letter) and one long sentence becomes incomprehensible quickly! I was interested in what you had to say, but your juvenile writing style forced me to stop. It was like listening to teenage girls argue over who said what about whom first!
Yikes. You can do better than this if you care about what you are writing!
DaveN 1140 days ago
@timothy vogel
punctuation counts, and one long sentence becomes incomprehensible quickly! I was interested in what you had to say, but your juvenile writing style forced me to stop.
hahaha…. hope you stopped before the good bit then, “lol!:….funny”,…
DaveN 1140 days ago
and @timothy … we have UNICORNS nah nah nah
Becky 1140 days ago
http://www.beckynaylor.co.ukHey guys, lets not let this interesting and informative post slide down the route of who can write the best. For anyone that doesn’t know, Dave isn’t the best writer / typist and verges on being dyslexic .. but does it really matter. He’s not expecting to get awards for being a journalist.
DaveN 1140 days ago
He’s not expecting to get awards for being a journalist. … YES I AM !
Becky 1140 days ago
http://www.beckynaylor.co.ukSorry to say it Dave .. you really won’t win any writing awards … stick to testing theories and doing great SEO
Tim Hatton 1140 days ago
http://www.hattonmarketing.co.ukI’d rather have a paragraph of Dave’s stream of consciousness than several pages of careful crafted waffle to say the same thing…
On first link counts – what happens if you nofollow the first link?
DaveN 1140 days ago
@Tim Hatton On first link counts – what happens if you nofollow the first link?
you get no anchor text equity at all… !
Glenn Gillen 1140 days ago
http://glenngillen.com/@DaveN thanks for the follow up. Best of luck on the Pulitzer
@rishil yes I was serious, and look how much extra value Dave has been able to give us as a result
DaveN 1140 days ago
@every I don’t mind sharing just hate writing ,,, maybe a video next time ?
rishil 1139 days ago
http://explicitly.meDave video fer sure. Anyway pullitzer is for content not grammar. You WIN.
Kevin Pike 1139 days ago
http://www.kevin-pikeIn other testing news. I have found the older crowed (people who had jobs pre-AOL chat room days) still care about grammar. ; )
Let me guess, Vogel is ~40 years old or more.
As a poor grammar and punctuation man myself, I say keep on rolling Dave.
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Lea de Groot 1139 days ago
I’m thinking that #4 the 301 redirect may have fallen into the ‘it looks like an aff link’ filter because of the number in the landing page url, so it may be a special case.
Agree that the space may have caused a technical problem. Interesting way to undermine a link swap.
Gareth 1138 days ago
http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/I’m all for some videos…live from the testing bunker. I’m also still waiting for the paid membership and delving into your hoard of dark secrets.
David Leonhardt 1137 days ago
http://www.SEO-writer.comWow. A couple surprises in there. But no surprise that anyone in the link-selling network, or using there plugin, would suffer. This is just another iteration of those automated link swap systems that leave a nice big “automation” footprint. That is not something anybody should want on their website.
@steveplunkett 1137 days ago
http://www.dallasseoblog.com(whispers)
refresh tag anchor text..
Sean Hecking 1137 days ago
http://www.interactivecleveland.comExcellent post David! I’ve often made the case that 301 redirects do not pass all link value. When conducting an SEO link building campaign the ultimate link is one that is clean with no spaces, redirects or the like. It’s important for users and search engines there is a clean one-to-one relationship of a link, it’s surrounding description and the destination to insure all value is passed.
Joydeep Deb 1137 days ago
http://joydeepdeb.blogspot.com/Second point ‘THE FIRST LINK FIRST RULE’ – make perfect sense to me also point number four ‘THE 301 REDIRECT’, thats true, google doesn’t pass all link juice to a 301 redirect as many spammers abused it a lot.
Thanks Dave for sharing this.
Mathew Anderson 1136 days ago
http://onlinephduk.com/Thanks Dave,
It would be great if you can write about the methodology used for this test. And perhaps the data as well.
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Mark 1136 days ago
http://pokeronlineitalia.comThank you very much for this post. I would have never known about “The first link, first rule”. It’s the first time that I hear about it.
All the best.
Wychwood Forestry Tree Surgeons 1136 days ago
http://www.wychwoodforestry.co.ukAn observation and a question I have been meaning to ask.
What is your opinion on this following observation? Has anyone seen anything similar?
I recently got a text link on a PR 5 page of a PR 6 domain.
The page was relevant cached etc etc and stood up on it’s own…
…however, the link was a listing type and required an image link. Inspecting the source code showed that this img link was placed in the directly before ‘the all important text link’ (eg. in the same pointing towards the same homepage on my domain)
Now…Luckily, I named the image keyword rich and also included a second keyword phrase in the img alt tag.
My site is in the top 10 on google.co.uk however I could not establish any movement from this link (the Top 10 competition is NOT fierce)
Whilst running Link Diagnosis the backlink is only discovered as an link and no text link is found…
…is it possible that the preceding link has rendered the text link useless in terms of SEO?
Has anyone else experienced this behaviour on their link building quests?
Thanks in advance guys
Wychwood Forestry Tree Surgeons 1136 days ago
http://www.wychwoodforestry.co.ukAn observation and a question I have been meaning to ask regarding this:
I would like to ask what are your opinions on this following observation and has anyone seen anything similar?
I recently got a text link on a PR 5 page of a PR 6 domain.
The page was relevant cached etc etc and stood up on it’s own…
…however, the link was a listing type and required an image link. Inspecting the source code showed that this img link was placed in the directly before ‘the all important text link’ (eg. in the same pointing towards the same homepage on my domain)
Now…Luckily, I named the image keyword rich and also included a second keyword phrase in the img alt tag.
My site is in the top 10 on google.co.uk however I could not establish any movement from this link (the Top 10 competition is NOT fierce)
Whilst running Link Diagnosis the backlink is only discovered as an image link and NO text link is found…
…is it possible that the preceding link has rendered the text link useless in terms of SEO?
Has anyone else experienced this behaviour on their link building quests?
Thanks in advance guys
Wychwood Forestry Tree Surgeons 1135 days ago
http://www.wychwoodforestry.co.ukApologies for posting this 3 times – although it was not purely based on spelling or grammar; it was the fact that code tags got filtered out!
…so this time I will leave the tags out!!!! Feel free to delete the previous posts Dave!
Ok here goes –
An observation and a question I have been meaning to ask regarding this topic:
I would like to ask what are your opinions on this following observation and has anyone seen anything similar?
I recently got a text link on a PR 5 page of a PR 6 domain.
The page was relevant cached etc etc and stood up on it’s own…
…however, the link was a listing type and required an image link.
Inspecting the source code showed that this img link was placed in the TD directly before the TD of ‘the all important text link’ (eg. in the same TR and each link pointing towards the same homepage on my domain)
Now…Luckily, I named the image keyword rich and also included a second keyword phrase in the img alt tag.
My site is in the top 10 on google.co.uk however I could not establish any movement from this link (the Top 10 competition is NOT fierce)
Whilst running Link Diagnosis on my backlink profile I discovered that NO text link was found. Instead, only the image link could found…
…is it possible that the preceding IMAGE link has rendered the text link useless in terms of SEO?
Has anyone else experienced this behaviour on their link building quests?
Thanks in advance guys
» Are 301 redirects a good thing? 301 redirects might be not so good for SEO after all? - State of Search 1134 days ago
[...] a test Dave Naylor for example proved that in a specific case an anchor text wasn´t passed through a 301 redirect. Over a year ago Patrick Altoft noticed the same behavior for some 301 redirects. Googe could do [...]
Michele Baldoni 1108 days ago
http://www.mbweb.itHi David, I test it and I can say that Redirect 301 Permanent server side with .htaccess PASS the anchor-text !!!
You can see the test here: http://www.mbweb.it
There is a link on footer ( LED ).
This link send to led.php page that do a 301 from .htaccess file and send you to caso.php
If you do a site: on Google ( site:mbweb.it led ) you can see that Google show caso.php on the SERP but word “led” is never write on that page.
Bye.
Michele
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Marjory Meechan 985 days ago
http://dustyplanet.blogspot.comHey Dave,
Sorry to punch in so late here but I have a question. What about nofollow meta tags? Are they handled differently from nofollow attributes by Google? It seems like they’re still doing some ‘discovering’ as far as those are concerned too.
Example:
Would the links on that page be followed/pass anchor text? (assuming I didn’t screw up the meta tag code)
Marjory
James Nixon 944 days ago
http://byjam.esInteresting stuff Dave. Did not know much about the first link first rule. Will be sure to investigate more! Cheers
Marc 737 days ago
Hi,
is there any new information about rule no. 3 (Space in URL). I just got a very good Link, but it has a space in the URL and it seems like the site-owner will not remove the space. :-/
So I would be thankful for more informationen about the “Space in URL doesnt pass anchor” Problem.
Greets from Germany,
Marc