Do search engines index .zip files?
One of the things we’ve been working on at IMJUK is to devise some added value extras: we’ve messed around with google maps and have given away a spreadsheet to help monitor the progress of internet marketing campaigns - we’re now looking at providing some free templates for Pligg, Wordpress etc.
Linking to .zip files could ‘bleed’ PageRank!
During our discussions on this subject we got to thinking about .zip files - its probably the most accessible format to provide all the files you need within one place. But this does create a problem - as each link to a .zip file is an indexable link by search engines. This creates a problem for funnelling PageRank - as the link to a .zip file ‘bleeds’ PageRank etc, and if .zip files are not indexable by search engines these links should really have the rel=”nofollow” attribute attached to them. As Pagerank funelling is a great way to increase the rankings on some pages it could be best to have these links set up to be excluded.
Does anyone know for sure if Google, MSN or Yahoo! indexes .zip files?
We’ve seen reports that Google is going to index the contents of .zip files and use the code within the Google code index - making the code accessible. As of yet we can see no evidence of this having happened yet.
We’re going to leave some links up to the .zip files we create at present. If they don’t start turning up anywhere we would expect we’re going to give them the rel=”nofollow” attribute.
If you have any experience of .zip files getting indexed, or not, please let us know.
If they did index the .zip file i’m sure this would create a huge problem for anyone that sells online info products as most of it is delivered in .zip, there would be a lot of changes to make.
Comment by Mike Filsaime - Marketing Fusion Secrets — December 30, 2007 @ 1:59 am