effects of the rel="external" tag?

I'm wondering what kind of effect the tag rel="external" has on links and the way SES interpet them? Anyone have some insight to this?

 

My understanding is that it does not effect any page rank that is passed on to the link.

 

I'm not speaking directly about pagerank, I know it doesn't effect pagerank, but how would it play in to the SERPs? The only thing I know of that effects PR is nofollow. Is there a guide our there with all references to rel="" and the effects of each one?

 

rel="external" does nothing except notify the browser to open a new window, like target="_blank". The only difference is that rel="external" is xhtml valid, and target="_blank" is not.

 

rel='external' is part of the code necessary to open a new window, but it still needs javascript to execute this action.

function externalLinks() {
 if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
 for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) {
   var anchor = anchors[i];
   if (anchor.getAttribute("href") &&
       anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external")
     anchor.target = "_blank";
 }
}
window.onload = externalLinks;

Code (markup):

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=385971

 

So rel="external" will still pass PR to the linking site, right? The only thing it is doing is to open the site in a new window?

 

Yes, it is a valid XHTML Strict alternative to target="_blank" which is not supported in strict.

 

Sweet! Thx for the confirmation.

 

Yes, it should not have a PR effect. The HTML 4.0 specification took away the target attribute, but it added another attribute: rel. This attribute is intended to specify the relationship between the document that contains the link, and the target of the link. The specification defines a bunch of standard values for this attribute (e.g. next, previous, chapter, section), most of which have to do with relationships between small sections of a larger document. However, the spec leaves the developer free to use nonstandard values for site-specific purposes.

 

i think it does not effect the page rank or serp. it's a tag like target="_blank"

 

Yes it's just like target="_blank" but it needs some javascript to make it functional. I have seen a lot of people use it without the javascript so it really does nothing. and as far as I know there is know pagerank loss if the link opens in a new window or not.

 

It does do SOMETHING - it's a XHTML strict way of using target="blank".

 

yes absolutely true

In the html specification they have removed

target=_blank

and new terminology would be

rel="external"

It would not effect the Pagerank it passes on


if it something like

rel="external nofollow"

then the pagerank would not be passed

 

Thanks, good to know

 

Only the nofollow has an effect (sorta)

 

Just searched for this rel=external explanation and found this link.... DP is large OK!!... thanks for the info

 

As far as i know its like target="_blank" but some javascript is needed to make it functional. A lot of people use it without the javascript

 

Yeah, that's right, a lot of people have been using it, non-functionally, without the javascript.

 

I guess sometimes it takes a while for the browsers to catch up with the HTML specifications.

Oh well, what can you do...

 

Why do people keep saying the same thing? I felt like was reading in loops to reading this thread. Because people kept repeating and same the same thing. It was as if I was reading around in a loop. While reading this thread things kept repeating as people said them again and again saying the same thing.