Comments on: Using Embed Code? Randomize your Links & Anchor Text

By: Andrea Moro

Andrea Moro — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:57:00 +0000

My only concerns, how this constant link change will be seen from search engines. I mean, the solution work fine as long as it stays in the textarea, but I’m sure somebody out of there will certainly do a mistake to start using this in a different manner.

By: Chad A. Buie

Chad A. Buie — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:10:00 +0000

got to love arrays; nice post Mr. King!

By: Tiggerito

Tiggerito — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 01:26:00 +0000

Sorry, I didn’t understand the full context. I thought this was code in a widget that they used. Like say a WordPress plugin.

So each user will copy the embed code containing a random link. Only your version will be randomly changing while theirs is a static copy of one version.

That makes more sense.

By: MyCool King

MyCool King — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:19:00 +0000

Not sure I understand your question in the context of what I’ve presented so let me try to better explain its usage.

The code will rotate the anchor text in the embed code (not the placement) which means that the anchors being used in your infographics and widgets will not all be the same. In fact they causes the anchor text to be much better distributed than it normally would be.

So the code doesn’t change the anchor text once it is placed on someone else’s site. It just picks from a variety of options that you set when your site loads and the user would then place the link with that anchor text.

While Google could potentially crawl every page on the web and reload it multiple times to see if the anchor text in the embed code of the source changes and then keep track of it to see of all of its placements, I don’t know that it’s a valuable use of their resources to stop something that is likely happening in so few places on the web.

Finally, the JS version doesn’t need to be crawlable because again it is for the visitor to copy and paste the embed code and put it on their site. It’s not for a link placement to rotate.

Hope that clears it up.

By: Tiggerito

Tiggerito — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:09:00 +0000

Not that I’m endorsing embedding keyword links in widgets, but…

Will random work? Each time Google crawls it will see different text and that may flag suspicion or a lack of trust in the link. A bit like how they may detect adverts and banners because they randomly change.

I’d suspect a stronger solution is to have it chose a random one per embed then stick with it. Maybe by using a hash (or more simply the page id) to uniquely identify each embed and calculating the anchor text to use from that.

Is there any evidence that a JS version is crawlable, that only the displayed link is picked up and that it passes PageRank?

By: MyCool King

MyCool King — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:39:00 +0000

I completely agree with you guys about the JS version. I’m just playing devil’s advocate and providing a solution that someone could then take and rewrite for themselves. I try to make my posts exhaustive.

By: Cody Boyte

Cody Boyte — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:34:00 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of the js version either – being client side it’s easy for google to detect as well. If you’re going to try to outflank the algorithms, do your work outside their purview.

By: halfbrown

halfbrown — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:56:00 +0000

Good thinking RE: the random anchor text (though I’d use mt_rand). Not a big fan of the JS solution though. Tinfoil hat: on.

I could actually see this being made into a WordPress (etc.) plugin. Then you could choose to have one spot in the admin UI *or* on the post/page to make any future updates to the keywords and/or URLs and not have to worry about bothering the devs for changes.