Add a link to a page that search engine bots will not see

[spirelli]

Hi,

I want to add a link to another website to a page of mine that Google (or any other bot) will not notice and not follow therefore. However, I want that all other links are still followed and recognized by a bot as usual.

Can someone help me with a bit of code? Would be fab.

Many thanks!

[cmuench]

<a href="http://example.com/" rel="nofollow">Click Here</a>

[gnarly]

Aye, nofollow will work to an extent. However, be aware that not all bots will adhere to that.

You can also add a robots.txt to your site http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html with specific entries for pages you want to hide from bots, but again, not all bots follow the rules.

Ultimately, the only way to stop all bots is to hide the page behind a password.

[spirelli]

There is nothing like a JavaScrip that sort of does not include the real URL right into the <a> tag, or something like that?

I'm also thinking of some encoding as it is done to hide email addresses from spammers,
like this: http://www.proles.net/emailencoder/
or this: http://w2.syronex.com/jmr/safemailto/

If it was javascript or something I'd preferably whant to do it without having to declare a javascript function on top of the page.


Thanks for any more ideas.

[spirelli]

*** bump

[gnarly]

There is nothing like a JavaScrip that sort of does not include the real URL right into the <a> tag, or something like that?

GAAAAH RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!!!

By doing that, you'll be blocking out a lot of legitimate visitors aswell as search-engine bots (i.e. anybody with javascript switched off / unavailable). In the age of malware / spyware / browser hijacking that's not at all uncommon. What's more, some bots have developed some very basic javascript abilities, so it probably wouldn't work out very well anyway.

As I said, start out with http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html and if that doesn't work, hide the page behind a password.