Comments on: Yahoo Counting Un-Linked Images as Links

By: Matt Ellsworth

Matt Ellsworth — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:50:48 +0000

Interesting.

@Perde – I noticed there is still no reply.

as for nofollow links – I know google shows them in the webmaster tool section.

Now you have me wondering if yahoo does include that. If they do – then flickr must really have a lot of links.

By: SEO Expert

SEO Expert — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:47:17 +0000

Very interesting subject. Will be watching cloesly for the Yahoo response. I would think that this may actually be a viable measure of site importance. Consider ad serving and ad tracking engines. If these solutions are heavily deployed, is that not a valid SEO link “vote” by using the software?

By: Perde

Perde — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:29:19 +0000

Not only that, I also noticed Y! counted some nofollow links! There is much wrong with the current SE but the good thing is that they’re working on it.

By: Perde

Perde — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:19:05 +0000

>> I’d love to hear an official response from Yahoo on this one.

I submitted the issue on SE feedback page, I think they’ll answer it soon:

http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=SiteExplorer&fid=39575

By: Perde

Perde — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:15:02 +0000

I think this should be a Site Explorer bug, as SE is already known to be very buggy. I already reported two bugs before via their feedback interface and once some SE employer replied back, telling they were going to work on it -The problem was about character encoding.

By: When NOT to Rely on Yahoo’s Inbound Link Counts » Small Business SEM

When NOT to Rely on Yahoo’s Inbound Link Counts » Small Business SEM — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:37:29 +0000

[...] Jeremy Luebke recently wrote on Marketing Pilgrim about Yahoo counting unlinked images on another site as inbound links. [...]

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:23:09 +0000

Nice find Jeremy. Add me to the list of people who have the disorder. I have a tendency to view the source code of too many sites as well.

I guess Yahoo spiders are just out there looking for a mention of a URL instead of taking notice where that URL might be in the code. It might be interesting to randomly add URLs in comments or in the text of a page to see if they get picked up there as well or if the =” ” needs to be present.

And I guess we all have some experimenting to do to see if these “links” are counting in the algo.

By: Jeremy Luebke

Jeremy Luebke — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:37:32 +0000

@Matt

That’s the real question. Yahoo counts links in their algo and Site Explorer shows these at links. So do these links count towards the algo or is this a Site Explorer bug? It wouldn’t take much experimentation to find out but that’s up to each individual SEO. I can’t do all the work for you.

By: Drew Stauffer

Drew Stauffer — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:06:09 +0000

I think I have the same disease as you guys.

By: Cavan Moon

Cavan Moon — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:57:20 +0000

Nice find, Jeremy. Something to look for in Site Explorer results for a few of our client’s sites. Did you end up giving JangoMail a try? It seems like it may be a little pricy for your average business owner, but the Agency features are excellent.

By: A Sampling of the Latest Marketing News | Search Engine Optimization India

A Sampling of the Latest Marketing News | Search Engine Optimization India — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:31:12 +0000

[...] Andy Beal’s blog shares an interesting fact on how un-linked images appear to be counting as links in Yahoo!’s algorithm according to Yahoo Site Explorer. [...]

By: Mark Barrera

Mark Barrera — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:56:49 +0000

“Does anyone else here suffer from that disorder?”

Yep, I do the same as you and SEO Refugee even when there is no real reason to do so. Glad to hear that I am not alone.

I think it is good to have this problem though because how else would we learn from others if we didn’t investigate everything?

By: Matt McGee

Matt McGee — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:08:31 +0000

I think it’s important to keep in mind that having a search engine recognize (or “count”) a link is one thing, but actually getting credit for it may be something else. I haven’t looked at the site you reference or their backlinks — is there anything that suggests these unlinked images are actually being credited and helping (in the SEO sense)?

By: SEO Refugee Blog

SEO Refugee Blog — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:57:24 +0000

If it makes you feel any better the first thing I do when I hear about a site (radio, tv, print, internet, whatever) is check their links and see if they rank for any terms I’d look for them with.

It’s an illness for sure but I don’t know if there is any known cure.