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Nofollow on shopify site “powered by shopify”. Is it stopping the ecom site from appearing on SERP?
Hi! I’m working on an seo project for school with an actual business. I did a semrush seo audit on their shopify ecommerce site and noticed that their site has “powered by shopify” at the bottom and nofollow indicated in the code. Is this something shopify does automaticly? Does this affect the site from appearing on the serp?
This is how the code looks:
<a target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” href=”https://www.shopify.com?(code continues)”>Powered by Shopify</a>== $0The url leads to the shopify page with (making commerce better for everyone)
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1 Reply
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No.
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No big deal with that, Shopify adds that to thousands of websites and Google understands that.
Same with for example WordPress, most themes add the `Proudly powered by WordPress` in the footer with a link to WordPress.
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As others are trying to elaborate on, albeit somewhat poorly, this is fine.
Long, long ago, website design companies would put these links into the designs they made. It made a cheeky backlink for them, and Google caught on and changed the rules. See, in many cases (like a company I worked for), they client literally didn’t have a choice in the matter. They were required to have that link, or else go get a website somewhere else. So, there’s a smidge of a punishment built into these. We had thousands of websites we made for dentists, and as a result thousands of backlinks.
It was hilarious the day we did a test and realized our own site performed better if we did, in fact, nofollow the incoming links from the sites we made and hosted. CEO dude was PISSED.
You’d be looking for NoIndex, paired with a NoFollow, if you were looking for something to remove your site from Google/making sure that isn’t happening.
A NoIndex/NoFollow is basically an SEO WMD. Last place I worked at, we had some devs take some liberty on a project. They decided that they should toss one of these bad bois onto a small element that was on page in a global element (i.e., on every page). They fucked up the target, though. Instead of hitting the element, they accidentally blocked the entire /body/ and content. We lost millions over the weekend because they did this Friday, and fucked off for the weekend. There’s a reason we aren’t supposed to push changes live on Friday.
So in your case, you’re OK! Only be concerned if that target is too broad. It looks to be only hitting that link back to Shopify with a nofollow, and this is very, very normal. Wait until you find a website where they nofollow the socials. You’ll pull thousands of “errors”. Part of using these tools is learning that they are aggressive and call LOTS of things out as errors or concerning, but you still need to do your due diligence and see if it’s a legit bad thing, or, if it’s just a good practice and your tools are doing their jobs by acting like an SEO drug sniffing dog, and it’s safe for you to ignore it and move to other potentially more concerning errors.
Now, a warning for you, my young SEO Padawan, the csuites don’t often understand these things. They think error mean error, oog want no error! You’ve experienced this instinct yourself now. I’ve seen people fired for this kind of misunderstanding, so it’s even more crucial to learn the errors, warnings, notices, etc., in each tool you use so you can be able to at least stand your ground on decisions you’ve made for a site.
It still may not save you, granted… The csuites are dark, dumb, and often full of terrors. But it’s best you be prepared, regardless.
Oh also! Get into your websites Google Search Console. You’ll e able to see indexed and non-indexed pages there. If you need help knowing where to go, toss me a pm and I can try to help where I can. Could even do a Google Meets for funsies early next week.
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