Anyone See This Before? Google Following Links that are Not Hyperlinks

[cajohnson]

Today I was going through my Google Webmaster URL Errors (404s) info.  I came across two links in my URL Errors report that are NOT actually hyperlinks on the source page.

Both of these links are from two different forum-type websites.  In both cases,  the post references a URL on my website (incorrectly, hence the 404 error) in the text of the post but did NOT actually link to my site.  I looked at the source code...no href.

Both forum posts simply had a

tag or

tag around the incorrect URL text referencing my site.

I have never seen this before or heard that Google will follow a URL that is not actually a hyperlink.  Anyone else?

[AndieF]

Really interesting. Would you be able to share with us the URLs of your site and the forums it's at?

Edit: I found this video at in which Matt Cutts suggests that they don't use it as a signal, although it is a few years old now.

[cajohnson]

AndieF:

Sure.  Here is a link to one...

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lighting/msg112233371417.html

The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 2nd post from davidtay - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/4inch-12v-recessed-lighting-housing-rem odel-75w.html.

Here is another one...

http://www.opensourcescript.net/answers/question.php?qid=20130425170248AACa3M1

The link that shows up in my Webmaster Tools is in the 3rd Answer - http://www.pegasuslighting.com/under-cab

Thanks for sharing that video! I can definitely see Matt's point about potential abuse.  However, from my Webmaster Tools it definitely looks like they are following these reference links and not completely ignoring them.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

I just saw this in one of my gwt reports also, same case, a full url in a forum, http:// and all, but not linked and it is showing up in the 404 errors notices.

Is it likely that this is just a public service type thing from GWT letting you know that there is a bad url floating around?

At the end of the day a full url is pretty much the same as a link, its just not clickable! To be honest I would be a bit surprised if google wasn't noting these type of references. Open to abuse sure, but in many cases completely legitimate references to other pages that just happen to not be hyperlinks. Doubt it contributes much (if anything) to rankings but not that surprising I guess that google can see it for what it is (a reference to a url) and if that url is bad then it shows up in your gwt reports.

[cajohnson]

Lynn:

A public service type thing letting you know about a bad URL and if someone copy and paste the URL it won't 404 anymore by setting up a 301 is possible.

I check my WMT about every month for 404s and this is the first time that I noticed these kinds of "links".

I just checked my latest backlinks report in WMT and these non-links don't show up in this report.

Perhaps there is some co-occurrence SEO benefit though?  Even if there is no SEO benefit it is nice "fixing" these for the potential website visitor to my site and I like seeing people mentioning us.

[LynnPatchett]

Had a bit of a dig and found this post which seems to confirm the reference being followed such as it is although not clear if any real ranking benefit.

http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/

Certainly is an interesting case and I agree nice to be able to 'fix' these errors and if there is some seo side benefits of any kind, so much the better!