Links to International Versions of the same site

[steermoz7]

Hi, our clients' .com site has a link in the header to the .com.au version of their site and vice versa.   In effect this creates a reciprocal link on each page.  Should we prevent the robots from crawling this link?  I don't think a nofollow will suffice.

[Alex-Harford]

Does the link benefit the users of the websites? If not does it need to be there at all? You could link to them on another page on your website, a contact us/about us for example, alongside an explanation of the international nature of the business - the link is then within context rather than stuck in a header.

I wouldn't bother nofollowing or blocking bots as I doubt you'd get penalised for the links - if you haven't already just do your best to make sure that the .com is not competing with the .com.au in Australia, I'd be wary of duplicate content on two English versions of a website.

[irvingw]

Since you said it's in the header i am assuming it's global so basically every page of the .com is linking to the .com.au and vice versa.

What's the reason for doing this?

I would have the lesser site link to the stronger site so that you're passing PR to the more important site.

If you do nofollows you're just throwing away a lot of PR. You can create an obfuscated javascript link that googlebot won't crawl, you'll save your PR and also won't get penalized for trying to push rank with two sites you clearly own which is against googles guidelines.

[steermoz7]

Hi Irving, so a obfuscated javascript link is ok by Google?