How does Google "detect" links on a web page?

[MonkeyJohn]

Maybe a dumb question...but...how does Google "detect" links on a web page? I mean, does it your URL have to be in the HTML source code for that page or can it be just visible/clickable on the actual page?

The reason I'm asking is because I looking a possible link targets and need to know if they are worth the effort

Hope that makes sense!

 

[blackbeans]

Google looks at the actual code of pages and makes link connections that way.

Of course, it has all sorts of features built in to detect cloaking, redirect and other black hat tricks to try to obscure the real links on a page.

If you do a search, there are some free tools you could use that will enable you to look at your page the exact same way Googlebot does.

 

[Worldwidebacklinks]

What Blackbeans said. If you would like to see what Google crawl on your website, go to your Web Master Tools account & fetch the URL. You will be able to see exactly how Google will crawl your page.

 

[myopic1]

The Google bot has become incredibly smart at crawling websites. Primarily it looked at HTML code, where it pulls your links from but it's also capable of rendering CSS to detect how your page actually looks (are you hiding content beneath an image?) as well as being able to fully crawl and render javascript and flash code. Clever stuff.

 

[Banned member 185991]

This is why people should at least learn the basics of web design before getting into SEO....

OP, can you explain to me how a link can be on a page without appearing in the source code for that page?

I'm assuming you are not talking about iframes and other shit like this right?

 

[SoccerLover]

Try to search a bit more for Spidering Technique & what is Google Bot.
It will clear your doubts for sure.

 

[VeyronXS]

Robot spiders will crawl your site - automated of course. Some web admins use Sape links to rank and are hidden, I earnestly discourage Sape though..

 

[Banned member 185991]

Robot spiders will crawl your site - automated of course. Some web admins use Sape links to rank and are hidden, I earnestly discourage Sape though..

You're on a blackhat forum, discouraging using sape and your username contains veyron

I think you won't be that popular around here, sorry to say.

 

[pressrelease]

Fetch as google in webmastrr tool and you will know.

 

[accelerator_dd]

Google is getting pretty good at understanding all kinds of pages. I assume you meant for links in images/flash/javascript actions.

Either it's getting better, or is fully parsing all those types of content. I doubt links in images have a role in ranking at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.