Yahoo! Search Indexing Email Addresses As Links

Jun 1, 2007 - 5:40 pm 4 by
Filed Under Yahoo SEO

We asked the question in the past, Can an Email Address Be Counted as a Back Link? Well, maybe the answer is yes.

I was looking at Excel Diamonds backlinks in Yahoo! Site Explorer for fun and found that Yahoo! was listing an email address as a link. Well, kinda.

yahoo-email-links.png

As you can see from the image below (if you can't see, click on it for a larger view), Yahoo is showing that they indexed an email address and they consider it a link. Why?

So I clicked on explore URL, exploring the email address, and it showed me there is a link from this email address at my personal blog.

yahoo-email-link-cb.png

So I clicked over and noticed, my client accidently put his email address in the location of the web address for when he commented.

cb-code.png

So, technically, it is wrapped in an <a href=" but it is also linking to sales@excel and the @ symbol should make it invalid. However, my server people must have made it work, because when I try that URL in my browser, it works fine.

excel-header-check.png

So, clearly this needs to be 301 redirected. But should Yahoo! know better? Nah, I'll take the blame for this.

Technically, Yahoo! is indexing a link and not an email address. So I have yet to see evidence of an email address that can earn link popularity.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

 

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