Does google scrape links from PDF files? do these links pass link juice?

[adriandg]

Title is pretty much the whole question.

[oznappies]

Have a look at this article http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067225/Google-Does-PDF-Other-Changes it explains some of the doc library search for pdf files and Google's statement here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/picture-of-thousand-words.html.

[MarieHaynes]

Google definitely does index the contents of pdf files.  I found this out the hard way as I had a real estate pdf on my site that I wanted to have listed in the index, but I didn't know that the contents would be crawled.  The pdf contained some listings that I was not legally allowed to advertise on my site.  (It was legal for me to give someone a report with the listings in it though).

When another realtor was searching for their own listing, my pdf came up.  I got in trouble.  I'm ok now though. 

[adriandg]

Hmmm although i thought you had answered my question, i actually feel that you have not... Yes the links you provided state that google scrapes pdfs and even OCRs pdfs to get a better idea what is in them, but i don't see anywhere that they mention crawling the urls they find in these pdf documents.

[adriandg]

yes, but do they crawl the links they find in these documents, or do they just index their contents.

[adriandg]

This person seems to think no: http://www.google.fr/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=14c5fe970fe84361&hl=en

but i'm not sure how much i can trust a random comment from a random source.  any evidence for either argument?

EDIT: And this person seems to think they do pass link juice: http://www.whydowork.com/blog/link-building/274/

Could a mod remove the marked as answered? i don't think i am able to remove it, and the question isn't really answered.

[oznappies]

Yes it does according to Google tech spec http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/50/admin_crawl/Introduction.html

which specifically states if follows html links in pdf 'It follows HTML links in PDF files, Word documents, and Shockwave documents'. Google's own api docs carry more weight than a comment in a forum_._ If they are licencing this out as an application it would suggest that the same technology is available in the main engine as does Dunamis's comment about a listing in a pdf document being found in search results.

You can test for youself by publishing a pdf with a link to a info page that does not show up in any other links. Include the pdf in your sitemap but not the test page and check if it shows in googles index site:yoursite.com the next time it crawls.

This also gives some insight in an interview with Matt Cutts - http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml

Eric Enge:  What about PDF files?

Matt Cutts: We absolutely do process PDF files.  I am not going to talk about whether links in PDF files pass PageRank.  But, a good way to think about PDFs is that they are kind of like Flash in that they aren't a file format that's inherent and native to the web, but they can be very useful.  In the same way that we try to find useful content within a Flash file, we try to find the useful content within a PDF file.  At the same time, users don't always like being sent to a PDF. If you can make your content in a Web-Native format, such as pure HTML, that's often a little more useful to users than just a pure PDF file.

[Cristina.Andrei]

I made a test and it seems that yes, the links from pdf count for ranking.

The test is on my Romanian blog http://seogan.ro/link-building-pdf-urile-o-sursa-de-linkuri-test

You can find an English translation here: http://www.seogan.com/pdf-link-building

Hope it helps.