Is there any SEO risk of using Javascript instead of real links?

Question

Essentially I have a client who wants to change some links from something like:

<a href="http://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow">Click me</a>

to something like:

<span style="color:blue;cursor:pointer;" id="faux-link">Click me</span>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $("#faux-link").click(function() {
        document.location = "http://www.google.com/";
    });
</script>

Essentially this would make the "Click me" text in the same way minus a few advanced link features (Mouse3 opens link in new tab, right clicking to see "Open in New Window" and other options, etc) also it would obvously not work for anything with Javascript disabled (or if Javascript on the page had any fatal errors)

Are there any SEO downsides to this that anyone has experienced or any kind of comments from Google or others on this type of behavior?

Answer 1

What you are trying to do is essentially PageRank sculpting. However, PR sculpting with rel=nofollow has not worked for years.

So it seems you're trying to get around that by using JavaScript, hiding those links from Google. Unfortunately for you, Google can parse JavaScript pretty well, and this article seems to imply that links created with JS still pass PageRank. So it could end up undoing what you had originally.

The only true answer here is to stop trying to cheat search engines. The folks at Google are plenty smart and have certainly thought of every trick you could try to pull. If the links in question are unverified from user-created content, add nofollow to them. If you/your client put those links in, then they are editorialised content and should be regular links. If they are bad links, don't put them on the site in the first place.

Answer 2

These are not links for the purpose of a web-crawler. You can check it out in the Google Webmaster Tools, if you like, to see how the crawler sees your pages.

Even though a link is nofollow, it still gets crawled. nofollow makes it not pass ranking but if those links are required to find more pages on your site, then the crawler wont get there.

To avoid the issue, at least you should put the actual link in < noscript > tags.

Now, I know you did not ask about users, but this is probably bad for them too as it can interfere with accessibility tools and browser extensions that affect links.

Answer 3

Google has come along way since it was first born and Google now has the ability to read most JavaScripts especially if they are written in popular librarys such as Mootools and jQuery. So even though the link is hidden in the anchor and href Google will see the URL in the JS. Now the problem with using Java Scripts with links that point externally is that Google will believe that the site is attempting to 'CLOAK' its links and will dislike that.

There are many reasons to use JavaScripts internally on a href's but none as I can think of unless its some kind of cloak on external links - This is how Google thinks.

Additionally often people like to know a link goes from A > B when they hover them and generally most scripts unless injected in will not do this, so as SEO stand point its not very good at all. Since Google believes visitors should see transparent links.

So in summary the 2 problems you face with type of linking is, Google may believe your trying to link to bad neighbors and cloak those links, or Google will not like it because your external links to your visitors are not visible. In my honest opinion if your client cares about SEO cloaking links should be avoided, it could lead to a kicking by Google.

A better way of linking out if he doesn't want to pass juice either in nofollow, or follow (Nofollow, still links some juice - reason I mention it) is to use a redirect script such as

domainname.com/redirect?http://www.another-domainname.com least that way the visitors see the end result - I know I'm repeating myself here but Google strong believes that users should be able to see where their going before they have gone :) So redirect? is meeting you half way but personally I'd just keep it normal ;)

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

JavaScript: Place the same content from the JavaScript in a tag. If you use this method, ensure the contents are exactly the same as what’s contained in the JavaScript, and that this content is shown to visitors who do not have JavaScript enabled in their browser. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353