Dear Everyone.

I have some questions about dealing with the Akamai network. (http://www.akamai.com/sitecomparison/)

Normally, the best practice to host it is when all the web assets should be into one domain. I know that.

But in this case I must use the Akamai network (essentially for file download), because they provide reliability and speed .. even in China.... one of our big headaches.

This solution also deliver SERPS of term related to our company, redirecting the customer into the files stored in the Akamai server.

The files download are trough links located in our website.

I know that to avoid Pagerank loss I should define the links with a NOFOLLOW instruction. But I don't want to use them because it shows a Big Red SEO flag to Google.

Any SEO experience dealing with a secondary file provider as Akamai?

Thanks in advance.

Having page elements at different servers and domain addresses can help load times and generally should not hurt the actual site content getting indexed... if the stuff referenced off the page is not what needs to be indexed or if it is and then gets pointed back to you... all should be good

Agreed - I do a lot of work with Akamai and for file downloads I've never had an issue.

Now, if you let Akamai serve the pages themselves - that's a whole other story - geolocation and duplication hell...

Ian

Maybe it is better to show examples on how we use the akamai network.

In a product page for example, in the "download here product brochure" there is a link pointed to a PDF located in the akamai server.

The links are more or less like this (random examples from akamai)
http://a69.g.akamai.net/7/69/7515/v1/img5.allocine.fr/img_cis/images/festivaldecannes/img/download/archives/dossiersdepresse/dp2007_fr.pdf
http://a1298.g.akamai.net/7/1298/8731/er9rezp/artur.download.akamai.com/7726/arturai/img_upload/pdf/CS_Presidenciais2006_ITIJ.pdf
http://a1264.g.akamai.net/7/1264/734/a3a8d715db3df4/resource.harley-davidson.com/company/investor/ar/2004/_media/pdf/2004_HD_AR_full.pdf

I am tranfering all my pagerank power to the Akamai network doing this?
There is a better way (that you know) to deal with this configuration?

Adding nofollow to these links wouldn't harm you in the slightest, I would definitely recommend doing it!