External links, redirects and no follow

[Wardy]

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I'm after abit of advice on the best way of doing some external links that I don't want search engines to follow or index.

I don't really anticipate that there are going to be that many of them so thought a re-direct page with external/affiliate links in like below with a "no follow" on the link that links to the re-direct.

<script language=JAVASCRIPT><!--
setTimeout("top.location.href = 'http://www.AffiliateLink.com",1000);
//--></script>

Any better suggestions before I do it this way or thoughts on how might be best doing it different?

Also the "no follow" atribute wa screated by Google I think? So do th elikes of Yhaoo/MSN take ntice of it now or not?

Cheers
Wardy

[Fraser]

Yeah google, yahoo & msn are all supposed to take note of "nofollow" so that's worth doing. Most comprehensive way might be to redirect links through a script e.g.

/links/outgoing.php?id=1

then block access to the links directory from your robots.txt file and also add the nofollow tag to the link.

[Elaine]

word of warning when using the 'no follow' attribute

I used this extensively on 2 pages which heavily featured a merchant who I didn't want to be seen to be 'recommending' - we vie for position for certain keywords and I have a private arrangement with them - no affy links.

When the site bounced back in Jan - these 2 pages remained on the missing list - not only had I to remove the extra code but also to rename the pages.

I reckoned GG had 'black listed' the pages for overuse of the 'no follow' - maybe thought it was full of spam.

[Wardy]

Thanks for the suggestion Fraser, will look at setting it up in the way you suggest.

Elaine, interesting findings, I take it pages that may have only had 1 or 2 occurances of the no follow were fine? I only expect to use 1, maybe 2 max on some pages.

Cheers
Wardy

[markzz]

you could just use a JS link - google can't follow it.

[getvisible]

you could just use a JS link - google can't follow it.

There's a difference between "reading" and "following".

On the majority of my sites I generally put the affili links in a redirect and robots.txt the folder.