Hubberscore determines (no)Follow links (http://bit.ly/10QS4Pn)

1. 48

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   I have a link to an affiliate and, TO MAKE GOOGLE HAPPY, it needs to be NoFollow because it really is an advertisement.
   
   I've tried every way I can think of to make this a NoFollow link and it's not working.
   
   Google Penguin will nail HubPages if we don't make those kinds of links NoFollow.
   
   So, how do I do that?

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   1. 83

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Can't you just delete it?  I'm not clear how that would be in your hub, so that's probably not much help.  Why have it hyperlinked to begin with - just mention the url or something?   
      
      One suggestion - since this wasn't picked up by staff just yet, you could perhaps unpublish the hub (not delete it) until you get a good answer and get it resolved.  The longer it is published, the greater the odds of it creating issues.  Let us know what you hear?

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   2. 87

      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I think you're worrying over nothing.
      
      Matt Cutts has said Google has no problem with affiliate links.  Google has a problem with excessive affiliate links, i.e. when a site has too many affiliate links in proportion to its content.
      
      Unfortunately there are always people who panic when they see a statement like that - because of course, Google doesn't say exactly how many is too many.  Aargh, let's not take any chances, let's nuke the lot!   And frankly, that's just silly.
      
      The sites that got crucified for affiliate links were sites called "thin affiliates", which consisted of spun or copied content - or no content at all - and hundreds of affiliate links.
      
      If you have only one or two affiliate links in a long Hub, it's absolutely nothing to worry about.

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      1. 73

         WryLiltposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         +1

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      2. 96

         Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I absolutely agree with Marisa. Dofollow affiliate links are not a worry within good quality HubPages articles. The latest Google update that Matt Cutts is talking about is to target any webmasters placing paid contextual links (within their content) which are dofollow. As a webmaster myself I am interested to see how this pans out as I have a lot of guest posts where I allow dofollow links either in the article body or in the byline. Although these are NOT paid links as I never take money for guest posts, I am unsure how Google is going to determine the difference! Another big shake-up coming, I feel!

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   3. 72

      Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      http://hubpages.com/faq/#linksnofollow

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2. 48

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   Marcy, I appreciate your feedback, but the ability to make an outbound link "followed" or "NoFollow" is something every writer on this site needs to be able to do. 
   
   You want links to great, related resources to be followed links because Google really, really likes that.  Links that are to affiliates, however, are required to be NoFollow by Google Webmaster Guidelines. 
   
   If you want to learn more about this, go to my Hub "SEO Tutorial" and go to this link from the Table of Contents:
   III. A. 5. ON-PAGE LINKS

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   1. 73

      WryLiltposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      The issue of hubbers being able to pick and choose dofollow links has been raised before. Currently the only way to do so is to have an author score below 75.
      
      However, as the majority of affiliate links are no longer allowed on site, it may soon be a moot point.

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3. 48

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   Do you ever use AllPosters for images?  If you do, you have to link to them as an affiliate.

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   1. 73

      WryLiltposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I am well aware of what an affiliate is.
      
      As I said, nofollow links are not an option at the moment, although it is a good idea. However the majority of affiliates are no longer allowed here anymore.

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4. 99

   Susana Sposted 11 years ago

   It is best practice to add the nofollow tag to any outgoing links that you don't want to pass pagerank to, including affiliate links. But at the same time, Google is pretty good at determining which links are affiliate links and making sure that they don't (pass rank), so it shouldn't cause an issue.
   
   http://www.seroundtable.com/google-nofo … 15354.html

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