Thread: How to nofollow tag cloud?

I'm displaying tag cloud on the homepage and I want to nofollow tags being displayed in the tag cloud. How do I go about it?

I guess this would require editing core file as I'm unable to find a plugin for this purpose.

I would:

• Load the blog in my web browser
• View the source to find the code section where the tag cloud was implemented
• grep the Wordpress directories for strings from that code section
• Look for the "<a href" in the tag cloud code section
• Add in "rel=follow" to the appropriate part of the code

I've searched in the mod on those things, and couldn't find it This is really strange.. but since it's flash-based I think you need flash to edit that? As in the code I was unable to find links starting with <a href (except 3, but those linked to the website from the owner)

Greetz

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

I would:

• Load the blog in my web browser
• View the source to find the code section where the tag cloud was implemented
• grep the Wordpress directories for strings from that code section
• Look for the "<a href" in the tag cloud code section
• Add in "rel=follow" to the appropriate part of the code

Yep! I've been doing it throughout the day. And finally I have the solution

The thing which costed me so much time and efforts is that it was not easy for me to locate the function where tag cloud is implemented (there are so many files in Wordpress). But now I've some understanding of how tags work in WP. WP uses two functions for tags - one to display it and other to generate it.

If anyone wants to no-follow tags in the tag cloud, here's the solution to the best of my knowledge -

• Find category-template.php under wp-includes folder and open it.
• Find function wp_generate_tag_cloud. In the function, you would find $a[] = "<a href='$tag_link' class='tag-link-$tag_id' etc etc...
• Add rel='nofollow' between <a and href
• Done!

This worked for me.

Originally Posted by Aquarezz

I've searched in the mod on those things, and couldn't find it This is really strange.. but since it's flash-based I think you need flash to edit that? As in the code I was unable to find links starting with <a href (except 3, but those linked to the website from the owner)

Greetz

I'm not using the flash-based tag cloud plugin - the one which rotates tags. I'm using the one that comes with Wordpress by default.

Originally Posted by mixke

I'm displaying tag cloud on the homepage and I want to nofollow tags being displayed in the tag cloud. How do I go about it?

I guess this would require editing core file as I'm unable to find a plugin for this purpose.

Why would you have nofollow tag instead of dofollow?

Thanks for the hack I will test this out.

Originally Posted by menj

I believe the "All In One SEO" plugin has a feature that can give "nofollow" tags to the tags cloud.

No it doesn't. It only adds noindex to tag archives.

Originally Posted by begood

Why would you have nofollow tag instead of dofollow?

Because you don't want to pass pagerank to tag pages.

Originally Posted by dcristo

Because you don't want to pass pagerank to tag pages.

Ah... but since we now know that nofollow doesn't preserve PageRank, but instead wastes it, there's no motivation not to pass PageRank to tag pages.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Ah... but since we now know that nofollow doesn't preserve PageRank, but instead wastes it, there's no motivation not to pass PageRank to tag pages.

I'm not sure that it wastes it? From the latest discussion from G it no longer passes the additional pagerank to other links on the page. Either way, I'd prefer not to have the tag pages get indexed. I've used meta noindex and nofollow as an extra measure to make sure the spiders keep away.

Originally Posted by menj

I believe the "All In One SEO" plugin has a feature that can give "nofollow" tags to the tags cloud.

This is the best one and the simplest one, All in One SEO Plugin will do for nofollow-ing the tag and archives and category, you can choose it by yourself.

Originally Posted by Penguin Kribo

This is the best one and the simplest one, All in One SEO Plugin will do for nofollow-ing the tag and archives and category, you can choose it by yourself.

You have the option to add meta noindex to archive, tag, category pages etc NOT nofollow.