I wanted to let you know I found a small bug in the whitelist function, a new version will be uploaded soon.

ok, so if we use this mod is it safe to remove all nofollows? I also use the nofollow attrib to stop the spidering of sorting links, things that could be considered dup content, should I still use that?

I would remove it regardless of installing this link or not.

Google's change means it is never a good idea to use nofollow on an internal link. and I mean never.

Instead to control duplicate content use rel canonical

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...canonical.html

vbulletin will hopefully include rel canonical for internal duplicate content management in a future update.

ok thanks, =)

Do you think removing nofollow from external links is a good idea as well or will it make no difference..

Ok, I do understand now. After reading the links you provided, plus your explanation, it makes much more sense and I apologise for being a bit thick headed in this, but I have been focusing alot lately on improving my seo as of late, and the more I learn, the more I dont understand lol.

But yes, the point is to lose as little as possible points via the redirect link dilution.



I currently use the old mod posted earlier in this thread, to add nofollow only to external links in posts, etc.
Should that mod be removed in leu of your modification?,... left in to enhance functionality?... or doesnt matter?

edit to add - ( The bolded text in my quote in this post apparently answers my last question.)

Thanks again for your help and I appreciate sincerely your input and advice.

Yes, remove it, and this answers mindhunter's question as well.

I just uploaded a new file with a new version that fixes the small bug in the whitelist. Just reinstall (allow overwrite) the new product.xml file, no other updates are needed.

On second thought: i decided to install this hack right away. Many thanks.

Since SE are guests anyway, why not make this dependant upon member groups? There seems no use of activating this functionality for anyone other than guests.

EDIT: since a link to your site is on the redirect page, this defeats the purpose of link weight retention.

Now the page rank is no longer flowing to content relevant sites, but leaking to your site. The link to your site is defined in the template EXTERNAL_LINK. Please change this.

When clicking on an external link, a member is logged out. Could you please resolve this?

You mean show different content to search engines than you show to other guests Alfa1 for the purposes of SEO? That'd technically be cloaking Alfa1 and is against guidelines and while it is a minor offense and probably wouldn't result in a penalty or ban, it is not really that worth it.

I could see offering that as a toggle in a future release, allowing you to set that in admin, leaving the choice up to you. It is actually a fairly good idea for a toggle.

I have no idea why someone would become logged out, the external link does nothing with cookies. Perhaps it is a browser issue? No one else has reported that, perhaps that user's cookies got corrupted or overwritten randomly, just as they clicked the link.

As for the powered-by link. It doesn't defeat the purpose, a small amount of link weight does pass through it, very small, a couple percent. The link is how I hope to spread the word of this plugin. Not every webmaster visits vb.org, but as sites install this plugin they'll see the powered by link, click on it, and see the explanation for what the plugin does and how it works. Its in the template, I can't force you to keep it, but I'd rather you keep it. This plugin is free, with the powered link you're still saving an enormous amoung of the link weight you would be losing without this plugin. It seems a small price to pay, but it is on the honor system.

Anyone try this on 3.7 ?

yes, 3.7.2, it worked