Matt Cutts on Widget Links

Matt Cutts recently posted a new video about NO-Following Widget and Infographics links, this isn’t his first attempt to get the word out on this subject. This video about Google’s current thinking on getting links from article marketing and widgets was Published on 17 Oct 2012

Matt says in the 2012 video

Whenever you get a link from just a word press footer or just a random footer or, you know, when someone installs a widget or they install
some theme on their content management system, it’s often the case that they’re not editorially choosing to link with that anchor text.

and then roll forward to 12 Aug 2013 and Matt releases this video

again adding the “not editorially” added which is odd really because if I was adding a widget to my website isn’t that my choice and if I’m the editor then isn’t that my editorial choice? For example let’s say I was writing a blog post about Bronco, my adding the link is editorially my choice but what if I wanted to add a map to my post :

I’m pretty sure you will agree that the “View Larger Map” link is a clean link, and I know that Googlers will say “it’s not a commercial back link” {cough}, Google wants you to think the links like this search engine optimisation are what they class as commercial but they’re not. Google is built around authority links, the anchor text is just the cherry on the trifle in fact too many cherries and the trifle is ruined, no cherries, well that’s no trifle 🙂

but what if I wanted the latest Ripon weather, I should get the Met office widget .. right

This weather forecast is generated by the Met Office Weather Widget

sneaky 2 links, one anchor “weather forecast” would that be a commercial link in Googles eyes?  If it is then why is the met office ranking number 2 for weather forecast?

Tripavisors widget was mentioned a few times to me when I was discussing the No Follow widget video on facebook and twitter so here is a screen shot from Tripadvisor’s widget creation page :

and the widget looks like :

But I did give away 5 clean Links like these :

(just view the source code or visit TripAdvisor widget page) personally I find those deep links ok, in exchange for that widget and editorially approve them.

Anyway I don’t think it’s the widgets that are the issue it’s those pesky image links just check out what Google Play does again these are followed links but I guess that’s ok?

I mean it’s not like those 90 million image links will help Google index the 7 million play store pages is it?