Comment on Anchor Text SEO Test by SEO Dave.

SEO Tests Been running an SEO test on nofollow links anchor text benefit for years and the SEO results are below.

Added a link from a comment: it’s the comment above this one, but used to be on another site (moved the SEO Gold site here), now it’s to another page on this website.

Part of the comment is

This is an SEO test, testing nofollow attribute.

SEOstenchbomb

SEO Test Results Nofollow Anchor Text

The above is a screenshot from when the comment was on the SEO Gold site.

Where the made up word “SEOstenchbomb” is the anchor text of a nofollow link to another webpage (where the nofollow link goes wasn’t that important).

Since SEO tests are regularly ruined by web scrapers copying content, I’ve regularly changed the test anchor text (it’s no longer “SEOstenchbomb” if you look close. I’m going to keep the rest of this comment using “SEOstenchbomb” as the text we are looking for, but note you’ll need to search for the text in the other comment to see current test results.

Google has told us nofollow links anchor text is NOT indexed, it’s supposed to be hidden to Google in every way including the anchor text, the anchor text should NOT be indexed in anyway as anchor text or even body text.

A Google search for SEOstenchbomb or “SEOstenchbomb” (with speech marks is useful for SEO tests sometimes) currently (15th June 2014) shows 0 pages indexed in Google.

This site runs WordPress with the Stallion SEO Theme which reuses comments, most pages indexed for our test SERP (if any) are reused versions of the comment text (an excerpt of the test comment with the link replaced by just the anchor text: so plain body text). Those comment pages (if any) are expected to be indexed, it’s this webpage that’s important:

# https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-test-anchor-text/

# https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-test-anchor-text/?cid=22575

Where the nofollow link is located (the Stallion SEO Super Comment also has the nofollow link).

If information provided by Google is correct that the anchor text of nofollow links are not indexed in anyway those webpages should NOT be indexed in Google for the search SEOstenchbomb.

Also the nofollow link points to: https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-comments-and-rel-nofollow/#seotests

I added the #seotests to make sure Google counts the anchor text (Google ignores the anchor text of multiple links to the same URL, adding #anything mean Google will index the anchor text).

If Google passes no anchor text benefit to the linked to page it shouldn’t be found in Google for the “SEOstenchbomb” search.

Note: rel=”nofollow” links deletes link benefit, for every rel=”nofollow” attribute you add to your website it’s costing you the equivalent of linking out to a random site for no benefit in return.

DO NOT USE REL=”NOFOLLOW” IT HAS ZERO SEO VALUE

Test SEO update August 2014: Checking the made up keyword in Google shows 3 pages indexed in Google.

# https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-test-anchor-text/ – The main article for the test comment (nofollow link present).
# https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-test-anchor-text/comment-page-1/ – A paged version of the above page (nofollow link present).
# https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-test-anchor-text/?cid=22575 – Stallion SEO Super Comment version of the test comment (nofollow link present).

For all three pages above the “SEOstenchbomb” (remember this isn’t the actual test word, check the first comment or at Nofollow Google SEO Test for the correct anchor text to search for) is the anchor text for a rel=”nofollow” link. This confirms Google indexes the anchor text of nofollow links at least as body text.

The URL the nofollow link is aimed at: https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-comments-and-rel-nofollow/#seotests is NOT indexed in Google for the made up keyword. This confirms Google is NOT passing anchor text SEO benefit via the nofollow links (three of them).

This could not be a clearer SEO test result. Google indexes the nofollow anchor text for the page it’s on, but not for the page it’s linked to.

David Law