Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google penalty for links opening in new tab?
-
Our web services provided suggested that Google doesn't like in-text links that open the link in a new tab.
Can anyone verify this?
We often link to outside credible resources for our audience, though it seems smarter to open in a new tab rather than risk that the person will not navigate back to our site after finding us.
Thank you in advance!
-
I seriously doubt links opening in a new tab would affect your rankings or cause any kind of Google penalty. Not something I think you need to worry about : )
-
I have to echo Alan.
A long time ago when "pop-ups" were becoming a major problem forcing people into endless pop-up loops (still happens today) but browser have got much smarter and have some native functionality that can be toggled to prevent the worst case scenarios... back then I used to believe that all links should open in the parent, today I absolutely "hate" when a link to an external site opens up in the same window. I even hate google doing it to me when I click on results. I understand why, but its annoying and I always "right-click" open in new tab them.
So from a users experience perspective myself being the user, I would expect same site links to be in the parent window and external links to be a new window / tab. The exception being showing a PDF or some other sort of document on the same site, I would also think that should be opened in a new tab / window.
And finally I have also never heard of any penalty associated with the way a window opens.
-
Personally I like to have links open in the same tab, I will open them in a separate tab if I want them there.
But like Alan, Ive never heard of it being an issue one way or the other
-
Unless someone else here knows of a specific case study, since I've never once heard of such a penalty, I'm going to rely on the SEO best practices model which dictates that user experience is the primary focus.
Since it can confuse users to send them off-site within the same browser if they don't intend to actually leave (just wanting to check something else out while still wanting to read your content after), best practices always dictate that you open another site in a new window. Never open your OWN site in another window, only 3rd party sites...
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Jump links?
I am using a directory plug-in that doesn't have separate urls for each profile. Is there any way to set up a link to go directly to a particular business? https://www.sacramentotop10.com/business/chamber-of-commerce/
Web Design | | julie-getonthemap0 -
NO Meta description pulling through in SERP with react website - Requesting Indexing & Submitting to Google with no luck
Hi there, A year ago I launched a website using react, which has caused Google to not read my meta descriptions. I've submitted the sitemap and there was no change in the SERP. Then, I tried "Fetch and Render" and request indexing for the homepage, which did work, however I have over 300 pages and I can't do that for every one. I have requested a fetch, render and index for "this url and linked pages," and while Google's cache has updated, the SERP listing has not. I looked in the Index Coverage report for the new GSC and it says the urls and valid and indexable, and yet there's still no meta description. I realize that Google doesn't have to index all pages, and that Google may not also take your meta description, but I want to make sure I do my due diligence in making the website crawlable. My main questions are: If Google didn't reindex ANYTHING when I submitted the sitemap, what might be wrong with my sitemap? Is submitting each url manually bad, and if so, why? Am I simply jumping the gun since it's only been a week since I requested indexing for the main url and all the linked urls? Any other suggestions?
Web Design | | DigitalMarketingSEO1 -
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
Web Design | | BearPaw881 -
301 Redirect all pictures when moving to a new site?
We have 30,000 pictures on our site. Moz will return 404's on some occasionally, but Google seems to ignore those. Should I 301 redirect all those images when we move to a new site lay-out? Appreciate your views!
Web Design | | Discountvc0 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Hello Again Moz community, This is my last Q of the day: I have a LOT of outbound links on the home page of www.web3.ca Some are to clients projects, most are to other pages on the website. Can reducing this to the core pages have a positive impact on SEO? Thanks, Anton
Web Design | | Web3Marketing870 -
How to bounce back after a new url & new site design?
About a month ago, my company changed domains (from the long-established www.imageworksstudio.com to the new www.imageworkscreative.com) and also did a complete overhaul of our site. We tried to do everything necessary to keep Google happy as we went through this change, but we've suffered a drastic loss of both rankings and traffic. I know that can happen as a result of a redesign AND as a result of a new domain, but I'm wondering how long you would expect it to take before we bounced back and also, what can we do in the meantime to improve?
Web Design | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Link colour on page?
I always thought that the link colour has to be different from text colour? I have come across a site http://www.printandpackaging.co.uk/ and it has made me question this belief, they seem to only have bolded the link which would be very nice if this is fine.
Web Design | | BobAnderson0