Question

As far as I know many websites add rel=”nofollow” attribute to all outbound links inside their forum’s posts. As I understand, that way they tell search robots not to use those links for ranking webpages. Also I’ve noticed that some forums use inside redirect (I’m not sure if this is the right term though) for outgoing links. Let’s say the forum url is http://someforum.com. So when I post with a link

Hi this is [url="http://mysite.com"]my site[/url]

The link transforms to something like this

Hi this is <a href="http://someforum.com?href=http://mysite.com">my site</a>

I suspect that the meaning of this is the same as adding rel=”nofollow” atttribute.

Am I wright? If yes, is there any sense in using this kind of redirection and why not just use a rel=”nofollow” attribute instead?

Answer 1

This kind of redirecting is used for several reasons. Here are some I am aware of:

• tracking outgoing traffic leaving the own site
• displaying a warning page that the user is leaving the site now with the ability to cancel within a few seconds and go back

The 2nd point gives you a chance to keep traffic on your site. And there may be legal reasons in countries like Germany here. In Germany you are responsible even for content when it is not your own but you are linking to it. So in Germany you must check the linked content on a regular basis and warn users that the linked content is not under your control. This can be done on such an extra redirect page.

I am not a lawyer but this is one of the most discussed internet-related legal issues here.