This page last changed on Jul 06, 2010 by alui.

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 'Administrator Access' login screen will be displayed.
    • Enter your password and click 'Confirm'. You will be temporarily logged into a secure session to access the 'Administration Console'.
  2. Click 'Security Configuration' in the left panel.
  3. This will display the 'Security Configuration' screen. Click 'Edit'.
  4. Check the 'Hide External Links From Search Engines' checkbox.
  5. Click the 'Save' button.
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
Page: User Email Visibility
Page: Configuring Captcha for Failed Logins
Page: Configuring Captcha for Spam Prevention
Page: Enabling or Disabling Public Signup
Page: Managing External Referrers
Page: Hiding external referrers
Page: Running Confluence Over SSL or HTTPS
Page: Hiding External Links From Search Engines
Page: Ignoring External Referrers
Page: Configuring the Administrator Contact Page
Page: Anonymous Access to Remote API
Page: Excluding external referrers
Page: Hiding the People Directory

Document generated by Confluence on Mar 16, 2011 18:30