Hey, I'm new to the forum. Seems like a busy place. I think I might stick around. 
I've been using a real-time analytic tool called statcounter on my websites for the past few months. It's ok - not great. I just liked the fact that it was in real-time (unlike Google Analytics). Anyway, by luck - I realised that their code that you copy and paste just before the end body tag had a link in it that would should whenever somebody's JavaScript was turned on. As most of you know, search crawlers don't use JavaScript, so whenever they visited one of my websites, they seen this link. Now the link is not the main problem. I don't mind sharing a bit of PR. However, it was the way in which the link was formed that angered me.
<a href="suchandsuchaurl.com" title="keywordshere">.</a>
I could / and probably have been penalised in the search rankings because of this (Doesn't Google frown on links that the user can't see?). I just wanted to let everyone know that if they are using tools like this, that they should be careful and actually read the HTML that they're copying onto their webpages. Don't trust a site just because it's being used by many. |
