Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video answer yesterday advising website owners with a recommendation that may help from getting penalized by one of Google’s many spam filters.
Cutts recommends those who embed widgets on their site, or those who distribute widgets, should add rel=”nofollow” on the links in the widget code.
Cutts said the reason for this is because most people who embed widgets on their site are unaware of what else they are embedding on their website outside of the functionality of the widget. For example, if the widget is to embed a poll, it could contain a link back to the poll website without rel=”nofollow” on the link.
Google is also telling widget developers to add a nofollow on the link so the webmaster is not unknowingly passing PageRank back to the widget developer’s site.
Cutts concluded by saying the links within the widgets would not necessarily carry the same weight as a true editorial link. He also referenced several times his previous example of embedding infographics on a website.
Here is the full video from Matt Cutts:
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