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I wrote a guest post at the following URL:

https://wparena.com/integrate-google-tag-manager-wordpress/

At the end, you can see my author box with a URL pointing back to my site. This link is a regular "follow" link and the page doesn't have "noindex" on it.

However, I'm not getting credit for it. It's not showing up in Google search console, and it hasn't been indexed by ahrefs However, a week later the cached version doesn't show the author box.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cRTx81xI6zQJ:https://wparena.com/integrate-google-tag-manager-wordpress/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en%7Clang_fr

In addition, the Moz link checker shows 0 external followed links from the page:

No External Followed Links on Moz

Can anyone help me figure out what's going on?

TL;DR Is the site hiding my backlink from spiders, and yet showing it to users on the browser? Is this legal?

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  • Maybe Moz/ahrefs have not updated their index? Also, have you checked your link, to see if there are any rel=nofollow or rel=noindex tags assigned to it?
    – Craig
    Jun 2, 2018 at 21:16
  • @Craig It's already indexed by Moz. The problem is that it's showing different versions to viewers on browsers and other version to the spiders. Visit the link in your browser, and at the bottom you will see a backlink to my site. Retrieve it as a spider, and there's no link! Jun 2, 2018 at 22:14
  • As you can see in the Google cached version, then entire <section> element is missing, and I'm not getting credit for the backlink anywhere. It shows only when viewed in the browser. Is it some Javascript? More to the point, is this entirely legal? (From a Google standpoint)? Jun 2, 2018 at 22:15
  • IIRC Google has stated that they aren't big fans of links like this and they may be discounting or ignoring it
    – John Conde
    Jun 2, 2018 at 22:22
  • 1
    Backlink sites are junk. They are so behind, they are relatively useless. As far as Google is concerned, they do not show all backlinks intentionally.
    – closetnoc
    Jun 3, 2018 at 1:28

1 Answer 1

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+50

You should wait, or better use Ahrefs. Everything is ok with the backlink - look at screenshot from Ahrefs.

Regarding Google cache - it is pretty inertly. Beside of this it should not be used to know, how Google sees your page. Read this. One possible reason why you don't see the your author box with the link is, that this box is rendered by Javascript pretty late and the cache doesn't get it at all. enter image description here

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  • Thanks for the response! So that's the reason huh? It's being rendered by Javascript and so it's not in the cache...And Ahrefs can't be smarter than Google, so hopefully Google's seen it too! Jun 6, 2018 at 15:49
  • check in your web analytics, whether there were visits with referrer from wparena - if so, Google 146% knows about it ;)
    – Evgeniy
    Jun 7, 2018 at 15:13

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