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.htaccess processes requests received by your webserver.   It doesn't process HTML sent to the client, so it can't affect those affiliate links.

Personally if you are using a tool like Open Site Explorer and are already undertaking a link cleaning exercise. If you identify no follow links on spammy or dodgy sites then I would add to the disavow as you are doing this anyway. I would rather clean all links as who know that Google will change next so I prefer to ensure everything is legitimate and as it should be even if our clients currently aren't being penalised. I wouldn't go out of your way though to disavow these no follows if you are not cleaning your links anyway.

Google tends to downplay the existence of negative SEO, because: (1) frankly, it makes them look bad, and (2) people tend to over-estimate how common it is (we all like to blame the competition). In most cases, if Google thinks a link is malicious and being created by a third-party to harm you, they'll just devalue it. The problem is that Google is far from perfect at detecting who created a link. If they had that down, they'd be a lot better at dealing with spam. So, I wouldn't trust them to simply figure it out. If a link or linking domain is clearly bad, and especially if you've suffered a penalty, be proactive. The very fact that Google is warning you in Webmaster Tools suggests that they haven't simply devalued these links. They think that the links are suspect.

The prices on the website must be a joke.

I have made the same experiences... Ashley is right: that`s the standard

Switching to Pro is only available for those accounts that were created in Pro. For the new accounts, there's not a way to go back to Pro. If you care to share (either here or in a PM) your preference for Pro and what we can do to make Moz Analytics better, I'd love to hear it and will pass along to the appropriate people here at Moz.

Hi Vince Not sure what they're trying to achieve there.  That code will be ignored.  The "noindex" command is meant to be used within a tag, such as: .  It's not acknowledged (by Google anyway) as a directive in an <a> tag.</a> <a>Would presume they're trying to use it in the same way you can use a rel="nofollow" tag, but this won't have the same effect. Puts a little bit of doubt in my mind as to the integrity and quality of the site going forward, but that's probably a bit harsh. In short, the link will be behaving just like a normal one would, at least for Google. Hope this helps.</a>

Hi Vince, If there is such a tool, I haven't seen it. Chris's suggestion to export/import csv files into Excel and combine there would probably be where I'd start, but I'm not sure how easy it'd be to work with the annotations in Excel. There's a Greasemonkey (Firefox) script to export them, but I haven't used this myself so I can't confirm how smoothly it works. Mash-ups of multiple metrics on a single chart like this I rarely find to be helpful, as they become visually confusing quickly - but if this is exactly what your boss is looking for, you're probably going to end up creating something in Excel and replacing the data each time (but saving the visualization settings). You could also hack together a macro to handle the repeating and tedious tasks. Sorry I don't have a better/shorter/easier answer for you here. If you do find or build a solution that is robust and/or elegant, I hope you'll head over to YOUmoz and share it with the community. Best of Luck, Mike

Vince, We also use Serpbook, which is a great tool. We also leverage the Moz Ranking area in Moz Analytics to track keywords. There are a lot of tools out there and Rank Tracker is something we are looking into. Do you recommend that in your experiences? Would love to know your thoughts on that software overall if you use the whole Suite of their products. Cheers! - Patrick

To be honest, the only way I judge directories today is by how much referral traffic they might bring. In the past 2 years we've seen Google get tighter and tighter on link directories, and if you're going after a link purely for the "juice" than I would consider that highly suspect in Google's eyes. On the other hand, standards are different for local and niche specific directories, as they might more endorsement and local citations are considered the #1 local ranking factor. At the end of the day I doubt very much a link from the Yahoo directory will hurt, but I would also be equally surprised if it helped much.

Recognize that there are three major types of "bad" backlinks that you need to look for: sitewides over-optimized anchor text links from really stinky places Link Detox is great--I use it all the time to diagnose penalty issues.  BUT it only really helps with links from spammy domains--it won't help you spot over-optimized anchor text.  I use OSE's anchor text tab to do that. To spot sitewides, you'll probably want to download the entire backlink profile from OSE into a spreadsheet, then sort by domain, and look for massive blocks of links from the same domain.

Thanks, could you be more specific as for the networks that still work? Please email me at seowar [ at ] gmail [ dot ] come

Hi Vince, There is Link Risk at http://linkrisk.com/ Also here is a review from back when they were in beta testing   http://www.stateofdigital.com/linkrisk/ I have not used them because when I did my link analysis only Link Detox was available. If you give it a try, please share your experience.

One SEO implication that redirecting all of your error 404s to the home page is that it could lead to Google and other search engines to flag your site for having 'soft 404 errors.' Best practice is to have a custom 404 page, that returns a 404 message, that then helps the end user find what they are looking for.  Either a list of top categories, a search box, or a phone # to call tech support. Here's what Google says about why you shouldn't do this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181708?hl=en Returning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404) can be problematic. Firstly, it tells search engines that there’s a real page at that URL. As a result, that URL may be crawled and its content indexed. Because of the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages, your unique URLs may not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently and your site’s crawl coverage may be impacted (also, you probably don’t want your site to rank well for the search query [File not found]). We recommend that you always return a 404 (Not found) or a 410 (Gone) response code in response to a request for a non-existing page. You can improve the user experience by configuring your site to display a custom 404 page when returning a 404 response code. For example, you could create a page containing a list of your most popular pages, or a link to your home page, or a feedback link. You can also use the Webmaster Tools Custom 404 widget to add a search box and more site search options to your site. But it’s important to remember that it’s not enough to just create a page that displays a 404 message. You also need to return the correct 404 or 410 HTTP response code.

Gary, you made my day! Thanks a lot. Now I know what i need to do.

Thanks for helping me out. I'm referring to this sort of urls that I can find in code after commenting

I think that's a good summation Mat. It's not going to add any "SEO" value at all, but it might be useful for users. If so, great; If not, don't do it.

That worked, thanks!