XF 2.2 Disable external links already posted or prevent SEO from finding external links

[KSA]

We run a very big board with over 4 millions posts and we have an issue with spam related SEO because of the big amount of external links we have. Is there away to remove or disable external links or preferably prevent search engines bots from seeing/indexing external links. If there is a way to remove external links, how can we exclude external images?

 

[Mr. Jinx]

External links should have the 'nofollow' tag.
This is to tell searchmachines not to follow those links, so it shouldn't affect SEO.

 

[KSA]

Lets assume for the sake of my enquiry that all links on my board have a dofollow tag, how do I approach this to correct the issue?

 

[KSA]

is there a way to actually check for dofollow links aside from using third parties like Ahrefs, Moz...etc?

 

[Jeremy P]

Links in user-generated content are tagged as nofollow (and ugc), though by default this only applies to content posted by non-staff members. In XF 2.2+ this behavior can be controlled via the 'Bypass "nofollow" in submitted content links' permission.

 

[KSA]

Links in user-generated content are tagged as nofollow (and ugc), though by default this only applies to content posted by non-staff members. In XF 2.2+ this behavior can be controlled via the 'Bypass "nofollow" in submitted content links' permission.

Nofollow tag does not mean links are not readable by Google bots. Sometimes Google see a website with millions of external links as spammy. Now my question remain, is there a way to actually remove all external links posted on my forum?

 

[Raaabo]

Were you able to resolve this? I'm also looking for a similar solution / dealing with a similar problem.

 

[KSA]

Were you able to resolve this? I'm also looking for a similar solution / dealing with a similar problem.

I have not but what I did is I used a third party add-on to restrict bots from seeing any external links posted on my site.

 

[Raaabo]

I have not but what I did is I used a third party add-on to restrict bots from seeing any external links posted on my site.

Thanks for the quick revert!

A drastic solution for a huge problem. Nice. I will try this as well, thank you!