URLs in captions have nofollow added?

AdamNPAdamNP Registered Users Posts: 178 Major grins
edited November 8, 2013 in SmugMug Support
OK. Trying to be calm here, but wtf, seriously. I have been going through and adding links back to my main site in photo captions. The URLs work fine, but SM has apparently taken it upon themselves to add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the links automatically. This makes the links completely worthless for SEO purposes.

SM. This is NOT up to you. If a site owner wants to link to another site in their own captions, you do not get to add destructive tags to the code. This needs to be removed, or properly explained, *immediately*.

Comments

  • guyguy Registered Users Posts: 191 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    AdamNP wrote: »
    OK. Trying to be calm here, but wtf, seriously. I have been going through and adding links back to my main site in photo captions. The URLs work fine, but SM has apparently taken it upon themselves to add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the links automatically. This makes the links completely worthless for SEO purposes.

    SM. This is NOT up to you. If a site owner wants to link to another site in their own captions, you do not get to add destructive tags to the code. This needs to be removed, or properly explained, *immediately*.

    I see SM has added these to links I have in gallery descriptions too.

    It was my understanding "nofollow" was to prevent search engine skewing in blog comments etc & to mark a link as "not yours".

    It would seem that use should not include links put into photo captions & gallery descriptions by the site author.
    guy.smugmug.com
  • AdamNPAdamNP Registered Users Posts: 178 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    guy wrote: »
    I see SM has added these to links I have in gallery descriptions too.

    It was my understanding "nofollow" was to prevent search engine skewing in blog comments etc & to make a link as "not yours".

    It would seem that use should not include links put into photo captions & gallery descriptions by the site author.

    Correct. It is commonly used to prevent a spammer from plastering URLs all over the place. This has a place in gallery comments, for example. However, as you say, only the site owner can put them in captions and descriptions, and SM adding this is *completely* unacceptable and needs immediate attention.
  • yaypieyaypie Registered Users Posts: 46 Big grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    Thanks for the feedback, guys. We'll get this fixed.
  • AdamNPAdamNP Registered Users Posts: 178 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    Thank you. I assumed it was unintentional, but it's disastrous for those of us cross-linking for SEO purposes. Will the fix remove the nofollows automatically, or will we have to go through and edit out every single one?
  • yaypieyaypie Registered Users Posts: 46 Big grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    AdamNP wrote: »
    Will the fix remove the nofollows automatically, or will we have to go through and edit out every single one?

    Wish I could go back and do it for you automatically, but you'll need to remove it manually, unfortunately.

    This change should take effect in about an hour.
  • AdamNPAdamNP Registered Users Posts: 178 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    Wish I could go back and do it for you automatically, but you'll need to remove it manually, unfortunately.

    This change should take effect in about an hour.

    That won't hurt me too much, I stopped adding them as soon as I saw this was happening. I didn't find any in my gallery descriptions, so I'm assuming it was a "feature" added sometime after I created the descriptions, and the nofollows weren't added retroactively (thankfully).

    Thanks for getting to this so quickly.
  • yaypieyaypie Registered Users Posts: 46 Big grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    AdamNP wrote: »
    I didn't find any in my gallery descriptions, so I'm assuming it was a "feature" added sometime after I created the descriptions, and the nofollows weren't added retroactively (thankfully).

    Yep, that's correct. This was a recent change, and it didn't retroactively affect any captions or descriptions (so only captions or descriptions edited since this change would be affected).
  • AdamNPAdamNP Registered Users Posts: 178 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    I can confirm this is fixed in photo captions. Thanks for the very fast fix.
  • pilotdavepilotdave Registered Users Posts: 785 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    This change should take effect in about an hour.

    This stuff helps us understand why there's a long and ever growing list of bugs and feature requests. Someone took the time to design this new code, test it, publish it publicly, then a little while later remove it, test it, and publish it.

    That guy shoulda been working on something anybody wants! :D

    Dave
  • beardedgitbeardedgit Registered Users Posts: 854 Major grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    pilotdave wrote: »
    This stuff helps us understand why there's a long and ever growing list of bugs and feature requests. Someone took the time to design this new code, test it, publish it publicly, then a little while later remove it, test it, and publish it.

    That guy shoulda been working on something anybody wants! :D

    Dave
    Not sure that I agree that it was published publicly - nobody asked us or told us about the implementation, it had to be hunted down after it slipped in under the radar. The phrase I have in mind is "done on the sly".
    As for the notion that it was tested, how good was the test plan if the implementation has already failed?

    How many users will be aware of the need to manually repair any affected links? Not many, I suspect. Maybe only readers of this thread. SM needs to get an email out to ALL users ASAP informing them of the side-effects of this ill-considered implementation and telling them, in layman's terms, how to go in and fix what's been affected. It's called "Customer Service".
    Yippee ki-yay, footer-muckers!
  • DBRDBR Registered Users Posts: 145 Major grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    As many users have been saying, all changes should be documented and the documentation should be published. We shouldn't have to constantly monitor to see what gets broken today.

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk
  • guyguy Registered Users Posts: 191 Major grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    Yep, that's correct. This was a recent change, and it didn't retroactively affect any captions or descriptions (so only captions or descriptions edited since this change would be affected).

    So can you please tell us when this change was made so we will know how far we have to look back & fix things?
    guy.smugmug.com
  • yaypieyaypie Registered Users Posts: 46 Big grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    guy wrote: »
    So can you please tell us when this change was made so we will know how far we have to look back & fix things?

    The original change (which began adding rel="nofollow" to links) went out on October 25th.
    DBR wrote: »
    As many users have been saying, all changes should be documented and the documentation should be published. We shouldn't have to constantly monitor to see what gets broken today.

    1. More features.
    2. Fewer bugs.
    3. Faster changes.

    Pick any two! :)
  • pilotdavepilotdave Registered Users Posts: 785 Major grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    1. More features.
    2. Fewer bugs.
    3. Faster changes.

    Pick any two! :)

    Heck, we'd settle for any one! :D

    Dave
  • mbellotmbellot Registered Users Posts: 465 Major grins
    edited November 7, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    1. More features.
    2. Fewer bugs.
    3. Faster changes.

    Pick any two! :)

    So no option for consolidated and up to date documentation - huh?

    For the record... 2. 1 and 3 are meaningless without 2.
  • beardedgitbeardedgit Registered Users Posts: 854 Major grins
    edited November 8, 2013
    yaypie wrote: »
    1. More features.
    2. Fewer bugs.
    3. Faster changes.

    Pick any two! :)


    Wow, you call that "documentation"? :jawdrop
    Yippee ki-yay, footer-muckers!
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