BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank

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BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank

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Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:36 pm Post subject: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank

It has been quiet apparent since the beginning of my review, that Blog Catalog is playing very unfair.

I was asked to review Blog Catalog and the source code of the blogs listed within their directory to actually see if any backlinks or Google Pagerank is actually being passed off to the bloggers that submit there.

You will be surprised to read that any blogger that submits to Blog Catalog is not receiving any benefits at all and I’ll explain in greater detail why below.

What started this quest?

Over the course of a month or so I started reading more and more blog post about Blog Catalog and their unethical methods. Bloggers where complaining of the onclick="return JavaScript Function found in there source code and the use of the nofollow tag on their RSS feeds that where included for publication on Blog Catalogs services.

To make matters worse, Blog Catalog was not addressing the issue professionally. They were handling it rather unfairly by trying to shut up anyone that remarked anything negatively about the popular social Network community for bloggers.

The truth is in the Source Code Luke!

Now rather then go in to an even longer debate on Blog Catalogs ethics and black hat SEO techniques, I rather just post my findings and let you be the judge for yourself.

Example for reference only

I selected a random blog to start my review of their service, and after countless clicks on numerous blogs it was very clear that there webmaster etiquette was very shady.

All blogs that where checked and I mean all blogs included within their blog directory had the JavaScript function onclick, and the nofollow tag on blogs that decided to include their RSS feed with their submission.

Example of one listing at Blog Catalog

Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog

URL: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog.html

For users who wish to view this for themselves they can do so by selecting "View," from their browser and selecting "Page Source".

After all seeing is believing

After I viewed the source code for the above listing it was clear to me what they where doing, but it may not be obvious to the untrained eye.

So let's look at the first part of the code for the thumbnail that Blog Catalog provides for each blog listed within their directory.

Code:

Now pay close attention to the onclick="return o('book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog');". This is a JavaScript function embedded inside the URL for the thumbnail of the site.

A link on Blog Catalog might take a visitor to the blog, but Google will not give credit for the PR because they can't read JavaScript this is a known fact.

Quote:

Matt Cutts of Google has talked about this function in previous webmaster articles, that the JavaScript function is not crawlable by Google Bot; the giant of search engines, nor is the Google Pagerank passed from sites using this JavaScript function "onclick".

Matt Cutts Blog –

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-sneaky-javascript/

So why is Blog Catalog using this function?

After further examination of the listing you see again that they use the JavaScript function onclick in the URL that’s visible on the page...

Code:

<h2>Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog</h2>
<h3><a href="http://www.synchronity4change.wordpress.com/" onclick="return o('book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog');">http://www.synchronity4change.wordpress.com/</a></h3>

Now it's very obvious from an SEO stand point that Blog Catalog is only looking out for them selves. Each blog submitted to Blog Catalog must provide a reciprocal link back thus improving Blog Catalogs backlinks and Google Pagerank yet the bloggers that take part in their directory get nothing in return.

Therefore Blog Catalog reaps all the benefits where the Blogger who submitted their blog gets nothing. Where is the fairness in that? What does the blogger get in return?

But wait, there's even more foul play on by Blog Catalog's part.

Many of the bloggers have include their RSS feed to increase further exposure of their blog, but if the blogger took a second to review the source code they would see the tag nofollow appended to each blog post URL.

If you are one of the bloggers that submitted your blogs RSS feed to Blog Catalog, know that you are not benefiting.

The source code of the above blog listings RSS feed on Blog Catalog...

Code:

<h2>
<a href="/blogs/book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog/feed" id="blogsubscribe" rel="nofollow" title="Subscribe to this Blog"><img src="/images/feed_sm.gif" alt="subscribe" /></a>Recent Posts</h2>
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Again Blog Catalog is deceiving the blogosphere, as they are using rel="nofollow" tag on bloggers RSS Feed content, so therefore it doesn't get crawled by the search engines.

So ask you're self, what benefits is your blogs getting being listed in Blog Catalogs Blog Directory?

From an SEO stand point you are getting absolutely nothing.

To insure the integrity of this post and my findings, I have included the page source from Blog Catalog

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog Blog - Information, Comments, Reviews // BlogCatalog</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/css/common_prod.css" /><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/css/blogs.css" /><link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" /><link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" /><link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/nice_favicon.png" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed" href="/blogs/book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog/feed" />
<script src="/jsgz/blogcatalog-1.1.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script>

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/blogsearch.xml" title="BlogCatalog Blog Search">
<meta name="Title" content="Blog Directory, Blog Search Engine, Blog Sites" />
<meta name="Description" content="Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Search, Browse, Rate and Review thousands of blog sites." />
<meta name="Keywords" content="blog directory, political blogs, republican and democratic blogs, iraq blogs, directory, internet blog directory, search, social, rate, review, best blogs, interesting, personal, Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
<meta name="Slurp" content="NOYDIR" />
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<div id="content">
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<h1>Blog detail</h1>
<div id="blogdetail">
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<a href="http://www.synchronity4change.wordpress.com/" onclick="return o('book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog');" title="Visit Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog"><img src="http://www.blogcatalog.com/images/thumbshots/large/6/4276895.jpg" alt="Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog" /></a>
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<h2>Book Project Unity in Diversity at MyBlogLog</h2>
   <h3><a href="http://www.synchronity4change.wordpress.com/" onclick="return o('book-project-unity-in-diversity-at-mybloglog');">http://www.synchronity4change.wordpress.com/</a></h3>
<ul class="metadata">
<li>Author: <a href="/user/zublizainordin">Zubli Zainordin</a></li>
      <li>Listed in: <a href="/directory/arts/books">Books</a> <a href="/directory/society">Society</a></li>
<li>Tags: <a href="/tag/book">book</a> <a href="/tag/project">project</a> <a href="/tag/technorati">technorati</a> <a href="/tag/total%20happiness">total happiness</a> <a href="/tag/zubli%20zainordin">zubli zainordin</a> <a href="/tag/ecommunity">ecommunity</a></li>
<li>Added on: May 5th, 2007</li>
<li>Country: <a href="/country/malaysia">Malaysia</a> </li>
<li>Language: <a href="/language/english">English</a></li>
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   <p class="description">1,000 Bloggers at MyBlogLog in Synchronicity Sharing Blogging Experiences.</p>
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Refrence URLS:

http://moredoubts.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/blogcatalog-is-not-what-it-shows/

http://ns4w.org/blogcatalogcom-scam-dont-waste-your-time/

Shawn DesRochers Oh My

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	Rose Assist-Admin Occupation: Writer and Founder of Today´s Woman Writing Community Location: Canada Offline	Joined: Nov 30, 2004 Find all post by Rose Total Posts: 35 0.02 posts per day Total Words: 20,751
Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:34 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank


Shawn, great review. It is true that most directories start from zero, and do not pass PageRank until they climb. But BlogCatalog has been around forever. They are not a new directory. BlogCatalog was already well established with 60,000 visits a month, a PageRank of 7 and monthly revenue of $1725 when it was sold on Sitepoint for the price of $40000. At the time of sale BlogCatalog had 73,000 blog owners already on their mailing list. People submit to BlogCatalog because they do have a PageRank of seven and are well established. One thing to point out is that they are not classified as just a directory anymore. They are a network and still request a link back. Therefore they are benefiting, but bloggers are not. Some may argue that BlogCatalog is still beneficial because it sends traffic. I do not argue that. Yes the site may send the odd bit of traffic, but it does not pass on any Pagerank at all. That really is the subject here. From a pure PageRank perspective, no "juice" is being passed. "Matt Cutts and Brian White from Google both posted that links like this wouldn't pass PageRank because of the "onclick" behavior in the JavaScript." See: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=90316 Forum Signature Blog Forum Today´s Woman Writing Community Rose DesRochers



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Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:14 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank


Excellent find Rose -- Matt Cutts and Brian Davis of Google.com explain the onclick attribute in text links that clearly stat that no Google Pagerank is passed off. I also thought I would mention the reason for this post as some users feel it's unethical, or unjust. That is not our intentions. We simply wish to educate bloggers that are unaware of their methods and hope for vindication on Blog Catalogs part. This is not a personal attack on Blog Catalog or is there anything discriminating or detouring users from using their services. Blog Catalog does provide some very useful resources for bloggers. However, if a service is providing a service for bloggers to promote their blogs, why not do it fairly? This post is simply a review for bloggers to encourage Blog Catalog to better their service by correcting the above mentioned errors and ethics they have implemented. After all if Blog Catalog is going to insist on being called a Blog Directory, why not actively promote the blogs that are actually listed within the directory. To request a reciprocal link from users that take part in your services, and not provide a clean SEO friendly link in return is unfair. Any sensible user following this thread would agree! Shawn DesRochers Forum Signature Affordable Web Hosting \| Ultra Game Play



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Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:12 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank

Wow 218 Views in a day in a half!

I thought I would update users to the where this discussion has been leading over the last couple of days.

There is a heated debate going on over at Sphinn.com where Andy Beard, paid employee of Blog Catalog has contested and tried many tactics to debunk my review in a desperately plea that Blog Catalog Users are receiving Google Juice for the onclick function or the nofollow tag.

The discussion can be found here

http://sphinn.com/LinkBuilding/BlogCatalog---Blog-Catalog-Doesnt-Pass-Pagerank

Many users of that discussion have also already stated that the links do NOT pass Google Juice yet Andy Beard, has stated its incorrect.

Yesterday a forum thread was started at Blog Catalog asking for help in Andy Beards case to use the below syntax in a Google search inquiry to prove that links listed in Blog Catalog do receive Google Juice.

Dane told them to use the following syntax..

link: Your-Blog.com

This was a weak attempt to try and convince users that if their links are included in the index of Google.com then Google Juice is being passed.

FALSE AGAIN

Matt Cutts CEO of Google.com, has know joined the discussion and has replied to Andy Beard.

Quote:

Matt Cutts "Most SEOs would generally take it that if a link shows up when doing a link:domain.com query, then Google probably count it."

That's just not true. Or rather, if most SEOs take it that way, then most SEOs are wrong. Smile

Halfdeck actually bothered to hunt down where I've said it before. I'm happy just to re-state: if you assume links for a link: query automatically carry weight, then you've made a faulty assumption.

Now this reply from Matt Cutts truly debunks Andy Beards other argument, yet he still claims they do.

However the giant Google.com CEO Matt Cutts has already stated otherwise.

Another argument by Andy Beard to Matt Cutts

Quote:

"Andy Beard - Matt but there is a difference between what is reported in the Webmaster console and what is reported by the link: command, because I have never seen a link reported by the link: command that was nofollowed whereas the webmaster console does report nofollowed links."

Matt Cutts Reply

Quote:

Matt Cutts - AndyBeard, I believe that's true, but so is my statement. Smile

That is, if I recall correctly the link: command doesn't return nofollow'ed links. But that still doesn't mean that a link returned by the link: command carries weight.

Now back to the forum discussion over at Blog Catalog, where many users tried Dane’s, suggestion link:yourblog.com

Many users have already reported that they can't find any backlinks at all, some users went as far as page 24 and higher in their search inquiry to not find any backlink at all from Blog Catalog.

That discussion can be found here:

blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/help-me-help-me-with-my-add-riddled-impatience-and-get-a-free-link-too-boot

I state again and it’s being proven by users of Blog Catalog and the discussion over at Sphinn.com that my above review is correct.

Users shouldn't have such a hard time trying to find the backlink returned by Blog Catalog, yet many can’t.

The fault lies with Blog Catalog and their linking structure, and in hopes that users of Blog Catalog will encourage them to fix their errors.

Andy Beard also tries to state that Blog Catalog doesn’t require any backlink, false again. Many users have already stated their blogs where rejected on this principle.

Blog Catalog also uses a bot to verify the reciprocal link back Blog-Catalog-Bot2 which can be found in users website logs.

Now if Blog Catalog requires a link back from blogs, why not be honest and provide a clean link back to the blogger in return.

Shawn DesRochers

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	Rose Assist-Admin Occupation: Writer and Founder of Today´s Woman Writing Community Location: Canada Offline	Joined: Nov 30, 2004 Find all post by Rose Total Posts: 35 0.02 posts per day Total Words: 20,751
Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:04 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank


Shawn - I think we need to point out that Andy has replied to you with “Maybe your time would be more productively spent worrying about why people’s profiles on MyBlogLog link all the time to porn and warez - the “what is hot in my community “links.” The same can certainly be said to Andy who spends his time trying to debunk my posts, yours posts or anyones posts about BlogCatalog. I would also like to point out Blog Catalog's programmer states "We’re not trying to deceive anyone, we want to do whats best for the bloggers and if the javascript is getting in the way, we would gladly remove it." Why have they not removed it then? Forum Signature Blog Forum Today´s Woman Writing Community Rose DesRochers



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	Rose Assist-Admin Occupation: Writer and Founder of Today´s Woman Writing Community Location: Canada Offline	Joined: Nov 30, 2004 Find all post by Rose Total Posts: 35 0.02 posts per day Total Words: 20,751
Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank


Quoting Danny " Thank you for bringing it to our attention, don't be surprised if you see it implemented soon." He was replying to Sebastian. It was Mr Doubts who first found this June 7, 2007. He reported it here. Blogcatalog is not what it shows. BlogCatalog should have listened then, but no they were to stubborn to. It took a post of 58 Comments on Sphinn to wake them up. The good thing is I hope they now change things around to be fair. Credit goes to Mr. Doubts for first finding this though. Forum Signature Blog Forum Today´s Woman Writing Community Rose DesRochers



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Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 10:26 pm Post subject: Re: BlogCatalog - Blog Catalog Doesn't Pass Pagerank

I 'am not too concerned with Andy Beard and his tactics to prove something that many have already stated otherwise. Andy Beard is a paid employee and obviously a heavy supporter of Blog Catalog so any remark he has made in the discussion at sphinn.com is biased and one sided.

One of Blog Catalogs, web developers have also come into the discussion, and remarked that they will be implementing the changes noted in my previous post. All in all that is a step in the right direction for Blog Catalog and their users.

I would like to state however, that he remarks I haven't provided any true proof that it's not passing any Google Juice...

The problem is in the linking structure and embedding the onclick in the URL.

A better method would be to give each link and ID attribute and then use a JS script to track the ID instead of using the onlick.

Sebastian at Sphinn.com has already pointed this out, and it is the same method used on our directory.

In Googles webmaster guide it states certain characters and attributes can't be crawled correctly and are ignored. This has been common knowledge for webmasters since the revolution of Google taking over.

It remarks on avoiding these characters and attributes that evoke different behavior in browsers, the same principal goes for search engine bots.

The problem I see when examining Blog Catalogs directory is the following...

Its assumed like any special characters included in a url that the search engine would not be able to fully index the anchor link as Blog Catalog has it…

Code:

<a href="blog-url.com" onclick="blog name">etc…

SEO's have stated many times that search engines get hung up on special characters and that many of the search engines have great difficulty with JavaScript. Onclick is a JavaScript function so its assumed that the search engine bots, would start to crawle the first part of the anchor link only to stop on the onclick.

Therefore not indexing the full URL, and this would explain why many users at Blog Catalog can't find any backlink from Blog Catalog.

By assigning the URL with an ID and then using a JS script externally from the URL its presenting a clean anchor link that the search engines can crawl.

Example of a better linking structure...

Code:

<a id="#ID" href="some-blog.com">Some-blog-title</a>

Then include the JavaScript for tracking inside the page or in the header using the following

Code:

This way the link is SEO friendly and the search engines won't get hung up on the URL and index it fully and Blog Catalog would still be able to accomplish tracking and clicks per links…

In return the links would carry Google Juice and over time carry some sort of PR, as the links would be weighed in as a relevant backlink and counted as such.

So to answer the web developer from Blog Catalog that stated I didn't have any hard facts that it didn't - would be an obvious venture.

If I knew the key to the search engines algorithms and what they fully permitted and didn't I would be a very rich man. Only Google CEO Matt Cutts, Yahoo and MSN truly know and I don't think their going to be sharing it with anyone anytime soon.

But to point out the facts we do know,

Users at Sphinn.com have stated that they wouldn't pass Google Juice because of the linking structure, and the forum topic started at Blog Catalog should be quiet clear and relevant that users can't find any backlinks returned from Blog Catalog.

Correcting these omissions would insure Blog Catalogs success and give them greater presidents in the search engines.

Even a better opisition for the web developer of Blog Catalog; is to find me 10 links that does carry Google Juice from their directory? A link that actually has Google PR thats listed within your directory to prove your argument.... with the linking structure your currently using now.

Shawn DesRochers

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