Using JS to Hide Links

**ruffneck119** · 15 March, 2011, 21:50 PM

I have looked all over no one has a solid script to hide a link using JS. I used this code but it will not open in the same window. Can anyone help me make it open in the same window? Or do you have your own code to hide links from Google?

Code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- Begin

function url() {
hidden = open('http://www.url.com');
}

// End -->
</script>


<A HREF="javascript:url()" ><IMG SRC="image.jpg" border="0"></A>

**Mike-XS** · 16 March, 2011, 19:42 PM

I had some js code that would help but I can't find it right now..

I have looked all over no one has a solid script to hide a link using JS.

Look harder.. ?

For hiding links from Googlebot check out this discussion - SEOmoz | YOUmoz - New Reality: Google Follows Links in JavaScript. , there's a few good suggestions in the comments - like this one and here's some example code here you could try.

And you may find this youtube vid interesting too: Can I disallow crawling of my CSS and JavaScript files?

Here's another site which has some js code you might find useful:

'Google is able to interpret JavaScript code and find links'. To avoid this we must use some encryption, even if it is elementary.

JavaScript links invisible to search engines

Can anyone help me make it open in the same window?

Nope.

**Andy101** · 17 March, 2011, 09:47 AM

To open in the same window you can use an onclick event for an HTML element and document.location in javascript.

Not sure why you would want to hide a link from Google. Why not make it rel=nofollow. Maybe via the robots.txt file for javascript?

Or detect a bot from the HTTP_USER_AGENT environment variable. Look for 'bot' in the string. Then make the link invisible or something.

**UncleP** · 17 March, 2011, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by ruffneck119

I have looked all over no one has a solid script to hide a link using JS. I used this code but it will not open in the same window. Can anyone help me make it open in the same window? Or do you have your own code to hide links from Google?

Code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- Begin
 
function url() {
hidden = open('http://www.url.com');
}
 
// End -->
</script>
 
 
<A HREF="javascript:url()" ><IMG SRC="image.jpg" border="0"></A>

I'm a little curious as to why you'd want to hide links from google but couldn't you just put it in the robots.txt file so it doesn't crawl it? Or use a short link service. I can understand the need to 'cloak' links from the public tho' so those doing a mouse hover get a different url to actually clicking a link, to hide affiliate ID's for instance. JavaScript isn't needed for that, I have my own way if it's any use to you:

Code:

<a title="Click Here" href="http://www.google.com" onClick="this.href='http://www.yahoo.com'" target="_blank">Click Here</a>

The above for instance would give a mouse over url for google but go to yahoo when clicked. If you use an affiliate ID then the plain url in the first link (for mouse over url) and the aff ID in the second link (to be visited). Take out the target="_blank" to open in the same window.

It works for me and it's simple (I like simple) plus it works without JavaScript so it works if Java is off.

Alternatively - you could link to a redirect page in a sub folder and hide the sub folder with robots.txt, that might work, then you could do a meta redirect (index.html) or have a php redirect (index.php).
index.html redirect:

Code:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.domain.tld" />
</head>
<body>Loading...</body></html>

index.php redirect:

Code:

<?php
header('Location:http://www.domain.tld');
?>

Or there's plan 'B' where you could redirect to a blank(ish) sub folder and have an .htaccess 301 redirect, but maybe I'm just thinking too much now.

**Andy101** · 17 March, 2011, 13:34 PM

The above for instance would give a mouse over url for google but go to yahoo when clicked. If you use an affiliate ID then the plain url in the first link (for mouse over url) and the aff ID in the second link (to be visited). Take out the target="_blank" to open in the same window.

I like that

It should be great for affiliate links to say Amazon.

Who cares about people with Javascript turned off? They won't buy anything anyway

**TopDogger** · 17 March, 2011, 17:08 PM

Originally Posted by Andy101

Who cares about people with Javascript turned off? They won't buy anything anyway

It is not a matter of just having JavaScript turned off. If a user sets the security level to High in IE, active scripting is disabled, which includes JavaScript. A lot of users have JavaScript turned off and do not know it.

**xxcorrosionxx** · 12 October, 2012, 21:30 PM

Can i point something out? You cannot hide links using "scripts", its impossible. Well look, you could mask them, but decrypting the link would be easy. Hiding them using a database is however possible

**Andy101** · 14 October, 2012, 11:15 AM

Hiding them using a database is however possible

A database is simply a store of data with an engine to manipulate the data via server-side scripts such as PHP.

Of course, you can completely hide links using PHP where the links are simply not displayed according to what kind of visitor is detected.

p.s. If a user sets the security level to High in IE I don't think they would buy anything because they would fear using their credit card online.

**TopDogger** · 15 October, 2012, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by xxcorrosionxx

Hiding them using a database is however possible

If you just want to block the links from spiders for affiliate marketing, Matt Cutts recommends putting the links in a separate script and blocking the script using the robots.txt file. Here is one way of doing that without using a database.

Redirect Script for Affiliate Marketing - Click Script

Originally Posted by Andy101

p.s. If a user sets the security level to High in IE I don't think they would buy anything because they would fear using their credit card online.

Microsoft has recommended setting security to High several times in the past whenever some of their numerous JavaScript-related security bugs became public. It does disable some features on a lot of sites, especially if the sites use JQuery or Ajax. Here is one that they just issued on October 8, 2012. There have been dozens of these advisories over the past five years.

Microsoft Security Advisory (2755801)