4 ms·

I've noticed that Matt Cutts always dances around the question of whether links in PDF's count.

• fleitz 16y ago
  My opinion is that they do count. Intuitively, a URL is a URL and whether it's from an HTML document or a Word doc it's the same thing. You'd have to put in a bunch of extra code to make it not work like that. It's a $9 test, get a random domain fhg56784ei3dg.com with a random keyword, do absolutely nothing with the domain, throw a link in a PDF and see if your site gets indexed :)
  • ultrasaurus 16y ago
    I intend to test this eventually, but I think the test has to be a little more complex since you want to measure if it shares google-juice, not just that Google reads the URLs. Ideally I'll registering two random number domain names, both with random text around a unique word, then mention one in a keyword rich PDF and see which domain pops up first in the Google search.
    • fleitz 16y ago
      It's not just about google juice. You can boost pages within your own site with internal links. Also, people search for an absolutely stupid amount of stuff on torrent sites. Try putting your PDFs on torrent sites for a little extra traffic. If you seed it on the right trackers all the torrent sites pick it up for you for free. As well sometimes the torrents themselves rank really well. Keyword stuff your torrent files :) Remember to set the utm_source on your PDF links.
  • a5seo 16y ago
    You suppose Google has a "test detection" heuristic? For example, if we see a completely unique word suddenly appear on 2 domains that themselves have no possible meaning or prior reference, and everything is the same except 1 variable, then we'll just randomize the results? Seems like a test scenario itself might be algorithmically detected and f----ed with.