How should I render a widget with many links inside a blog so google don't penalize the blog?

Question

We run a service (will not mention the URL, as this is not a pitch) and need advice on Google-viewing-links matters.

The service is for bloggers and allows them to create a "linkup" inside their blog post. The linkup is like a mini pinterest inside their own blog where other users can add images/links/blogposts.

The widget that creates this linkup is a javascript snippet that does a remote call to our server. The response of the server is rendered inside the user's blog.

Now, the widget contains quite a few links. And we have set all links as nofollow so they don't look spammy in the eyes of google.

Going to google webmaster tools, I can see that the crawler can easily render the links even if they come from javascript.

So my question is: Is it better to

• completely hide the widget from google
• just leave it as it is, renderable with nofollow on the links
• remove the links and create them only when someone clicks on them?
• any other suggestion is appreciated!

Answer 1

Hiding of content including links can be considered as cloaking. If links are present on page there is no need to hide them.