This page last changed on Jun 23, 2008 by smaddox.

Hiding external links from search engines helps to discourage spammers from posting links on your site. If you turn this option on, any URLs inserted in pages and comments will be given the 'nofollow' attribute, which prevents search engines from following them.

Shortcut links (e.g. CONF-2622@JIRA) and internal links to other pages within Confluence are not tagged.

To hide external links from search engines,

  1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this:

    • Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open.
  2. Select 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
  3. This will display the 'General Configuration' screen. Click 'Edit'.
  4. Select 'On' beside 'Hide External Links From Search Engines'.
  5. 'Save' your changes.
Background to the nofollow attribute

As part of the effort to combat the spamming of wikis and blogs (Confluence being both), Google came up with some markup which instructs search engines not to follow links. By removing the main benefit of wiki-spamming it's hoped that the practice will stop being cost-effective and eventually die out.

RELATED TOPICS
Anonymous Access to Remote API
User Email Visibility
Hiding External Links From Search Engines
Ignoring External Referrers
Excluding external referrers
Spam Prevention via Captcha
Managing External Referrers
Enabling or Disabling Public Signup
Hiding external referrers
Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security

Document generated by Confluence on Dec 03, 2008 15:04