Alternative to nofollow: custom 302 url shortener?
- by Dogweather
Here's the scenario: lots of blogging platforms make it tedious to insert nofollow into links within the post content. I.e., you need to edit the html, format it correctly, etc.
I have a client who posts lots of content with links that should be nofollow'ed, and I thought of a novel way to handle this, since the blogging platform they're using makes it hard:
I install a URL shortener web app on the client's domain. The shortener works as normal, except it redirects via 302 instead of 301. The pagerank will therefore stay at the shortener's domain, and not flow on to the target site.
Part 2: In order to get the pagerank to collect meaningfully, say on the site's home page, the shortened URLs would be generated like this: /link?12345 instead of /link/12345. And then, the path /link would 301 to the home page. This way, the id is a param, not a path element. And thus, all the incoming shortened links are going to one path, which transfers pagerank to the home page.
So that's my idea. I wanted to see if anybody could find problems with it. Thanks!
