Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does Yelp pass link juice?
-
This is probably a profoundly obvious question, but I can't seem to find an explicit answer on the internet, so I'll ask it here:
Yelp's links out to local business websites are not nofollow'd, but they go through a javascript-based redirect. My understanding is that javascript redirected links do not pass link juice, so a link from a yelp profile will not directly impact my page authority; however, it looks like yelp does use nofollow judiciously for internal links, so I don't understand why they would allow follow for these "useless" outbound links.
Do yelp's javascript-redirected links pass link juice?
-
Just curious - where do you see the JS redirects? I'm seeing server-side redirects, but the interesting thing is that the return a 200 (not a 301 or 302), which could suggest they pass link-juice.
My gut sense is that Miriam's right - they probably mask direct link-juice but are still very valuable as a citation, especially for local search.
-
Hello Tyler!
What an interesting question! Not one I've seen asked before and I don't have an authoritative answer for you. I did find a couple of mentions of this out on the web.
Here's one from http://www.tastyplacement.com/6-best-free-local-business-directories-for-backlinks-customers-hits
4. Yelp.com. Yelp is popular (a fair number of visitors) and its pages rank well in the search engines. So, a listing here might earn you some supplemental results in a Google search. It’s review-based, and there are a lot of “interactive” features you’ll want to skip if you just want to list your business. Valuable and free. One limitation: Yelp does not give dofollow (a link that passes valuable pagerank to the target site) backlinks.
And a discussion at Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/jburq/acquiring_citations_from_directories_yelp_hotfrog/
I tend to think of the value of sites like Yelp as being in their quality as a citation and their ability to host conversation (hopefully positive) about your business. I am going to ask one of our super SEOs to step in and give you an opinion on this. It's a very good question!
Miriam
-
Oficially, no it does not pass link juice, BUT google is smart enough so you will gain smth from this link. + you can get some good traffic. It's always good to have your business listed on sites like yelp.
-
Not a clue. I'd guess they're nofollowing the internal links to better architect what internal pages are ranking, but maybe they intended profile links to pass juice, and implementation wasn't what they'd thought it be.
-
Thanks for the answer! Can you think of any reason why yelp doesn't nofollow these links? They seem to nofollow a lot of links within their own site, so it seems strange that these links are not nofollow'd.
-
I'm 99.9% positive the answer is no, they do not pass link juice. JS-redirected links are all hinky like that.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
How to set up internal linking with subcategories?
I'm building a new website and am setting up internal link structure with subcategories and hoping to do so with best Seo practices in mind. When linking to a subcategory's main page, would I make the internal link www.xxx.com/fishing/ or www.xxx.com/fishing/index.html or does it matter? I'm just trying to avoid duplicate content I guess, if Google saw each page as a separate page. Any other cautions when using subdirectories in my navigation?
Technical SEO | | wplodge0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
How to find and fix 404 and broken links?
Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links, but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404. Can you help?
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Find broken links in Excel?
Hello, I have a large list of URL's in an excel sheet and I am looking for a way to check them for 404 errors. Please help! Adam
Technical SEO | | digitalops0 -
Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion
Hi, We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections. To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections. Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections. This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line. So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed. One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Regards, Guy
Technical SEO | | guycampbell1 -
Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?
We are working on a website that has some high-quality industry articles available on their website. For each article, there is an abstract with a link to the PDF which is hosted on the domain. We have found in Analytics that a lot of sites link directly to the PDF and not the webpage that has the abstract of the article. Can we get any benefit from a direct PDF link? Or do we need to modify our strategy?
Technical SEO | | MattAaron0