02 Mar 2009, Posted by admin in Google, 19 Comments
Update: After almost 4 months, the TinyURL link has now started to pass anchor text value. As it’s unlikely that it would take Google 4 months to follow the TinyURL link, this suggests that Google has now started to follow TinyURL links and pass value as it should. HOORAY. I still think it’s best to use your own URL shortener though.
A while ago Rand Fishkin asked if URL shorteners such as TinyURL passed value. I started testing it when I read his post, and the results are pretty clear that, TinyURL at least, does not. At least, not anchor text value.
I put a link up on a test site with a unique word linking to another page on a different domain. The same page had another unique word linking to a different page on a different domain, this time going through a TinyURL. The target page ranks for the non-TinyURL link as expected. The other target page (linked with TinyURL) does not rank for the unique word. I gave it about a month to make sure, because it does tend to take Google around a week or so to allow for 301 redirects to pass value, as they catch up.
Why should TinyURL pass value?
Because it’s a straight up 301 to the target page. It should work. In theory.
Why doesn’t TinyURL pass value?
It’s hard to say whether this is an algorithmic or whether Google has manually chosen to not follow TinyURL links. If it’s part of the algorithm, then it could be because TinyURL has tripped a filter with Google. It’s commonly accepted (although hard to definitely prove) that having thousands of different domains 301 to yours can result in your domain getting a penalty, or a ban. It’s hard to say if that’s true, but I’ve seen and heard about it from personal experience. It probably just receives a manual review, but if it’s spam then it’s going down. Either way, a filter gets tripped.
The nature of TinyURL may be causing the problem. The domain itself has millions of seperate pages that all 301 to different domains. To Google, that’s a massive signal. It’s huge. No other kind of site acts like that. This may trip a filter, causing the link value (sharklarking) passing through TinyURL links to be reduced to 0.
Why isn’t Google correcting this?
Because seriously, why aren’t they? I used TinyURL, instead of the other URL shorteners, because TinyURL is used by Twitter. I know Twitter nofollows links anyway, but Twitter feeds appear in loads of different places in dofollow form. This means that hundreds of thousands of links that people are talking about and, in effect, voting for aren’t being counted. Why not? I thought that was the point of the democratic web?