I was thinking of starting a new topic here on meta to discuss this (Im not familiar enough with this pull requests/ commit jargon on github)
Trust me, Im shocked too… I also wouldn’t call myself a beginner when it comes to SEO, I’ve been on and off being involved for well over a decade. Whats going on here are negative ranking factors for sure. It may not hurt “LetsEncypts” SEO but smaller guys, for sure.
I think the majority of discourse users may share your mentality as far as SEO. Not giving it much thought. There’s a ton of hidden potential here.
Yes they do know its a link, they also know its dark just like the text and users won’t like that. Let’s not forget, google is now ranking us on what they see in the non-JS version.
In regards to the “Powered by Discourse” external link:
I remember watching a video with John Mueller/Matt Cutts - the Google SEO guys and they mentioned hidden internal links ( due to menu’s, JS etc ) dont really do damage. -
He also mentioned though, if its an external link , that you only show googlebot and not end-users, that it could be an issue.
I feel like im in the twilight zone to be honest. I guarantee you, once this is fixed , all Discourse forums will see a huge jump in Google organic traffic