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Today's question comes from Madrid.
Christian asks, what should we do with embeddable code in
things like widgets and infographics?
Should we include the rel nofollow attribute by default,
or advise the user that the code includes a link and give
him the option of not including it?
So my answer to this is colored by the fact that we
have seen a ton of people trying to abuse widgets and
abuse infographics.
We've seen people who get a web counter, and they don't
realize that there's mesothelioma
links within there.
So I've done a previous video where I talked about the
criteria for widgets.
Does it point back to you or to a third party?
Is the keyword text sort of keyword rich and something
where the anchor text is really rich, or is it just the
name of your site?
All that sort of stuff.
But I would not rely on widgets and infographics as
your primary way to gather links.
And I would recommend putting a nofollow, especially on
widgets, because most people when they just copy and paste
a segment of code, they don't realize what all
is going with that.
And it's usually not as much of an editorial choice because
they might not see the links that are
embedded within that widget.
Depending on the scale of the stuff that you're doing with
infographics, you might consider putting a rel
nofollow on infographic links as well.
The value of those things might be branding, they might
be to drive traffic, they might be to sort of let people
know that your site or your service exists, but I wouldn't
expect a link from a widget to necessarily carry the same
weight as an editorial link freely given where someone is
recommending something and talking about it in blog post.
That sort of thing.