Miscellaneous Hacks - Two-Step External Links for Link Weight Retention

Two-Step External Links
Thought up by Chris Beasley, coded by Chris Bowyer, copyright Jalic Inc. 2009.

Compatibility
Tested on 3.7.x and 3.8.x, may work on older versions as well.

Description
With Google's recent change to nofollow calculations using nofollow on your user submitted external links will still harm your site by depriving your internal links of PageRank. (See here.)

Forums that had installed nofollow on signature or other such user contributed links thinking they were controlling this are in fact no longer doing so.

One solution is a two-step linking process presenting a disclaimer on a redirect page (filled
with your internal links) to mitigate link weight loss. For a full explanation of benefits and the math behind them see the official page (a wordpress plugin is also available there).

Two-Step External Linking

This method is also useful for sites needing a disclaimer before sending people to third party user contributed websites for legal or liability reasons.

Using this plugin can reduce the amount of pagerank sent through user contributed signature and other links by over 90%, for every post or thread on your forum. It also allows you to keep using nofollow to indicate to search engines that if the link is to a bad neighborhood you are not at fault, while not wasting link weight on the nofollow link.

Settings
The settings are located in vBulletin Options -> vBulletin Options -> All the way at the bottom. You can do the following:

1. Create a white list of domains or urls exempt from redirecting.
2. Decide to apply "nofollow" to the external link that shows on the redirect page or not.
3. Turn on two-step linking for signature links.
4. Turn on two-step linking for post/profile visitor message/blog links.
5. Turn on two-step linking for user profile/memberlist links.
6. Define your redirect warning disclaimer paragraph.
7. Decide to use an additional automated meta-redirect or not, and the second delay.


Statistics

New Files: 1
File Edits: 2
Products to Install: 1
Readme included

Additional Uses
Because the actual redirect page is fairly independent of vbulletin and easy to access, you can run any other external links from any software on your site through it simply with the format of example.com/forums/externalredirect.php?url=http://www.externalexample.com. So if you're able to edit your CMS or otherwise manually format your links as such, they will be run through the redirect as well.

Support

I'll do my best to provide support in this thread only for people who have it installed.

Version History

1.00 - Initial Release
1.01 - bug fixes
1.02 - bug fixes, added admin toggle to allow you to choose to only show redirects to guests.
1.03 - bug fixes
1.04 - bug fixes, non-www urls & sigpic problems fixed.
1.05 - Jan 25th 2011, small xss flaw fixed

[aspen0]

Originally Posted by TimberFloorAu

Sounds very plausible.

I would like more information please, on the different link types you mention. I must confess I have never really understood the different link terms.

My expertise ends at "_new" and "_blank"

Could you explain more, and provide some example of a typical setup, to increase our "water retention" as you imply.

Regards Ste

Assuming you've read the linked to page already ( http://www.websitepublisher.net/two-step/ ), you can find out more about PageRank or Link Weight here:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/arti...nk_popularity/
especially here:
http://www.websitepublisher.net/arti...k_popularity/7 which is the page that covers this specific issue - just ignore what is said about nofollow, the article hasn't been updated yet

This article here: http://www.websitepublisher.net/arti...nternal-links/ covers this topic specifically for your internal links, rather than external links, but may help you understand the concept more.

[aspen0]

Originally Posted by relaxiha

WARNING: you are about to leave this web site and proceed to an external address. This link was submitted by a user and we cannot guarantee the appropriateness of the content it contains.

Continue to http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.com


Hello. This message will show. Whether is true? Please help me to.

That is the default message, to change that message in your AdminCP go to vbulletin options > vbulletin options, and then scroll down the list to Two-Step External Links, and select it, and you can edit the paragraph there.

[smirkley]

After some study on the subject I can plainly see the use for this feature.

A question if you would,...

Since all of my sig and post-external (as well as post-internal links), open in a new browser instance, and since this modification mearly provides a go-between page for the purposes defined, would it not be a good idea to just use a redirect page similar to stock vB?

IE - no header, navbar, footer, nor ad spots,... just the simple box stating the specific redirect?

I have reviewed your forum to get a feel of how it works, and the redirect page seems confusing with all the normal templated forum hotspots used in it.

Is this something that can be edited within a template for the mod?

(I know I havent clicked installed, I am trying to decide if this will work as defined and be customizable as I described) Thanks in advance.

[aspen0]

I'll need more details to help you troubleshoot guys. Did you do the file edits?

[aspen0]

Originally Posted by smirkley

After some study on the subject I can plainly see the use for this feature.

A question if you would,...

Since all of my sig and post-external (as well as post-internal links), open in a new browser instance, and since this modification mearly provides a go-between page for the purposes defined, would it not be a good idea to just use a redirect page similar to stock vB?

IE - no header, navbar, footer, nor ad spots,... just the simple box stating the specific redirect?

I have reviewed your forum to get a feel of how it works, and the redirect page seems confusing with all the normal templated forum hotspots used in it.

Is this something that can be edited within a template for the mod?

(I know I havent clicked installed, I am trying to decide if this will work as defined and be customizable as I described) Thanks in advance.

That would defeat the purpose.

You NEED the menu/header/footer because that is what saves the link weight.

When link weight is transferred it is shared between all the links on a page, which is why long forum threads become so dangerous because they can add up a lot of links (or blog posts with lots of comments, hence the upcoming wordpress plugin).

So, what you're doing is increasing your odds by outnumbering the external links with internal ones. On the forum page the external links may outnumber the internal ones, but on the redirect page there will only ever be 1 external link.

To find out how much weight is lost to that external link divide 1 by the total number of links on the page. So, if you have 20 links on the page, 5% is lost through the external link.

If we removed all the headers and footers and everything then you'd be dividing 1/1 = 100%, 100% of the weight would be lost. You've gained nothing.

Otherwise we'd not do a visible redirect at all, just do an automated php redirect. The point is to provide a redirect page with lots of visible internal links, the more visible internal links, the better.

Does that help?

[smirkley]

Question answered and that makes complete sense.

Thank you.

I will be installing shortly.

You have a nice site and very informative btw.

[smirkley]

OK, nother question,..

I noted that at least on your site on the forums in showthread,..

The sig links are processed through the redirect regardless of their destination, internally or externally.

Does this also hold true for posts, blog entries, etc?

Does the modification have ability to recognise internal links vs external links and properly allow or disallow the redirect depending on the destination? (Just thinking it would be a headache for members to click an internal link embedded in either a post,sig,or vbblog, and have to review and go through the redirect page) (I dont mean any CMS, just stock vb products)

[TWTCommish]

I'll field that one. The script automatically leaves links from the site's own domain alone. There's also a "whitelist" setting where you can list other domains that you'd like the mod to ignore.

[smirkley]

Originally Posted by TWTCommish

I'll field that one. The script automatically leaves links from the site's own domain alone. There's also a "whitelist" setting where you can list other domains that you'd like the mod to ignore.

Thank you and that does answer my question. I will be installing this but havent yet as I am not at my main console. Had I installed it I would have known about the whitelist, so my bad, and thank you again.

Originally Posted by aspen0

That would defeat the purpose.

You NEED the menu/header/footer because that is what saves the link weight.

As I have further thought about this, I am left wondering a bit more on the purpose of all the internal links on the redirect page.

Since the redirect pages full purpose is to dilute the assumed pr points loss for pages with many external links in posts, than the redirect page is assumably doing this by virtue of pulling the link off the page as a single external link, and surrounding it with internal links that normally appear as a function of page view in the forums.

But the more I think about it, it wont matter anyway on the redirect page, as the original threadview page is the one we hold greater concern with in regards to pagerank, as that is the one we have indexed. The external links will be by virtue of this mod, already prevent the pr points from being leaked away, and the redirect page, which is never spidered anyway as it is nofollow (I believe), will hold no concern nor effect of the pr points of the original indexed thread page.

Basically, I am seeing that a simple no-header/no-footer redirect box/page would suffice in protecting the pr points of the original thread, provided the original thread external links are reformatted to appear internal, as I believe this modification does already, to the search engines.

Is my thinking flawed in this?

Thanks again.

[aspen0]

Originally Posted by smirkley

Thank you and that does answer my question. I will be installing this but havent yet as I am not at my main console. Had I installed it I would have known about the whitelist, so my bad, and thank you again.



As I have further thought about this, I am left wondering a bit more on the purpose of all the internal links on the redirect page.

Since the redirect pages full purpose is to dilute the assumed pr points loss for pages with many external links in posts, than the redirect page is assumably doing this by virtue of pulling the link off the page as a single external link, and surrounding it with internal links that normally appear as a function of page view in the forums.

But the more I think about it, it wont matter anyway on the redirect page, as the original threadview page is the one we hold greater concern with in regards to pagerank, as that is the one we have indexed. The external links will be by virtue of this mod, already prevent the pr points from being leaked away, and the redirect page, which is never spidered anyway as it is nofollow (I believe), will hold no concern nor effect of the pr points of the original indexed thread page.

Basically, I am seeing that a simple no-header/no-footer redirect box/page would suffice in protecting the pr points of the original thread, provided the original thread external links are reformatted to appear internal, as I believe this modification does already, to the search engines.

Is my thinking flawed in this?

Thanks again.

Yes, you're not understanding, I'm not sure where exactly you're going wrong, but you are.

The redirect pages WILL be indexed by search engines, they have to be.

And the redirect links cannot be nofollowed, or you still lose the PageRank. That is what Google changed. Prior to this change using nofollow removed the links from the equation that figured how much weight would be given to each link. They changed it so the links are included, they just don't get delivery of their weight.

Let me try to explain as simply as possible.

Normally you would send all your weight to the external links, or, if they were nofollowed, the weight would simply be removed from circulation. In either case, you do not get to keep it.

By using this plugin instead of sending your weight to the abyss or to external sites, you're sending your weight to the redirect page.

The redirect page then sends most of your weight back through your site through your menu/header/footer. The small fraction that is left is all that ends up being lost.