Links on pages that are not cached or indexed by google

[PeterM22]

I dont think they count. What do you guys think?

[CMoore85]

Why would it not count? Many people have good reasons not to index specific pages and after all, the cached page is just a snapshot from the last crawl is it not?

[PeterM22]

I'd not thought of that.. good point. I was thinking they may not have been crawled

[AlexFusman]

If a page has not been crawled, any links on that page can not count towards link juice or rankings. However, if a page has not been indexed or cached, that does not mean it hasn't been crawled.

[PeterM22]

I'm guessing there is no way to tell for sure a link has been crawled, if its not index?

[KeriMorgret]

If the page is not crawled or indexed by Google, then presumably they haven't seen the links and it doesn't count in the algorithm. It can certainly count in the minds of users who view the page. If I had a link to my site on a password restricted website that was used by the top writers at TechCrunch, I'd be quite excited because real humans are going to see that link, visit my page, and possibly write about me.

If a low-quality website has made a page that is titled "spammy link exchange page that I've noindexed and going to see how many suckers I can get to give me links that I'm really not reciprocating on" then no, that's not going to count for anything.

[AlexFusman]

If you have access to your log files, you could check if the Googlebot useragent has visited recently.