Referral Links

[CrazyLemurs]

But then the link isn't referral-ish then.
Are you saying it'd be fine to put say google.com and then "put this on the end of the link to help me out: />?123abc" rather than google.com/>?123abc

[HotelUser]

But then the link isn't referral-ish then.
Are you saying it'd be fine to put say google.com and then "put this on the end of the link to help me out: />?123abc" rather than google.com/>?123abc

No, I'm saying it's fine to link to this:

somewebsite.com

instead of this:

somewebsite.com/referral.php?u=34534534

You can already do this within the forum rules.

[Chippiewill]

It's the domain, not the url structure that would harm pagerank.

[CrazyLemurs]

So if the site isn't known to Google as problematic, the referral part of the link isn't going to affect us anymore than the plain link?

[Chippiewill]

So if the site isn't known to Google as problematic, the referral part of the link isn't going to affect us anymore than the plain link?

Well, other than maybe SEO issues, but considering habboxforum isn't using tidy urls to begin with I don't see it being an issue.

[CrazyLemurs]

Then that reason for the rule isn't going to be a valid one?

[HotelUser]

So if the site isn't known to Google as problematic, the referral part of the link isn't going to affect us anymore than the plain link?

It's problematic all the time. Google isn't the only crawler on the forum, and just because Google doesn't know about one website now doesn't mean they wont know about it tomorrow.

Because you can simply remove the referral portion out of a hyperlink, there is absolutely no reason to allow such links on the forum, when they only promote a more spam oriented environment both from the perspective of search engines, as well as from the perspective of other users.

[CrazyLemurs]

It's quite clear that there is nobody on this entire forum who supports my viewpoint (but really, is there ever?) so maybe we should close this thread before I start getting pissed off.
And, once again, every point I thought was valid has been refuted.
Maybe I should stop giving opinions to stuff from now on, they're never right...

[HotelUser]

It's quite clear that there is nobody on this entire forum who supports my viewpoint (but really, is there ever?) so maybe we should close this thread before I start getting pissed off.
And, once again, every point I thought was valid has been refuted.
Maybe I should stop giving opinions to stuff from now on, they're never right...

There's nothing wrong with sharing your opinions with the community, not every feedback suggestion can always be implemented.

[GoldenMerc]

It's quite clear that there is nobody on this entire forum who supports my viewpoint (but really, is there ever?) so maybe we should close this thread before I start getting pissed off.
And, once again, every point I thought was valid has been refuted.
Maybe I should stop giving opinions to stuff from now on, they're never right...

No one supports your opinions as they have always been silly and pretty pointless to be fair, I mean this rule came into place a while back when every single person had a referral link in there sigs, or posted them in threads, pushed people off the forum as you couldnt find a half decent post.