It may seem odd coming from someone who practices link building and whose clients require the service, but I'm gald to see that Wikipedia has shifted back to nofollow on all outbound links. What surprises me is that a relatively small-time SEO contest was the catalyst (according to Wikipedia's talk page on the subject).
At Jimbo Wales' directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded "nofollow" -- this should help cut spamming immensely once word gets out in the SEO community.
This was mentioned in the discussion Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Globalwarming awareness2007/SEO world championship -- expect a spam onslaught.
As usual, the "SEO" brush is applied as a moniker to mean "those who spam for links." I don't expect this language or reputation to change, but it's always sad to see. What will be interesting to watch is how it really affects Wikipedia's spam problem. From my perspective, there may be slightly less of an incentive for spammers to hit Wikipedia pages in the short term, but no less value to serious marketers seeking to boost traffic and authority by creating relevant Wikipedia links.
I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Wikipedia doesn't revert back and switch back to live links in the future. Since anyone can add them, Wikipedia is practically the definition of where nofollow should be instituted. Matt Cutts mentioned back in our multiple choice interview that:
In my ideal world, Wikipedia would add nofollow to their untrusted links, but work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the nofollow attribute.
They're halfway to your dream Matt. Here's to hoping they don't go any further :)
leadegroot said: "Odd, I am seeing nofollow on some pages, but not others. Surely they have only one central code source?"
I've noticed the same thing too, is this going to be applied to all links or just for new links?
Seriously try this,
Make a page about some made up term something like
hyperactivemoroniclinkprotection for an example.
Plant it deep with no internal links from the domain you put it on.
Now go to one of your other domains something with high authority. Make and anchor link for
hyperactivemoroniclinkprotection (or what ever term you choose) make it the only link you ever give the page.
Wait say 2-3 weeks, search for the term.
You will know the truth about and SE indexing.
Mark Barrera at MasterLink reported on this a while ago https://dallas-seo.blogspot.com/2006/11/nofoll...
I did too but won't spam Rands blog with my own self serving link but let me say I posted on it more then a full YEAR ago. Like I have said once here already, the command has been rendered all but useless. Seeing is believing try it yourself,
Jack Spirko
Wikipedia is the Amazon.com of content in Google.
Remember guys that Wiki's rankings will not change, it just will now be allowed to pass HUGE PR favor to it's sponsors.
;-0
Rand, i assume this means that your page strength tool needs to be amended, i.e. take out the wikipedia links section.
Announcing this to the SEO community may put a small dent in Wikipedia link spam. SEOs that have been paying attention may have realized that Google wasn't passing PR from Wikipedia for some time.
The real problem is that Wikipedia ranks too high for many, many terms because it is considered an "authority" site and it passes INTERNAL PR.
The real solution is for the engines to treat Wikipedia sections as independent sites and force them to rank based on the external links pointing in to them. The Wikipedia entry for SEO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_op... has less than 5,000 external links (mostly complaining about it ranking higher than it should, I imagine).
Take the same content, same back links, etc. and put it up at a 5 year old domain that wasn't part of Wikipedia and I doubt it would have a PR of 7 or rank in the top 10.
ROIGuy - I agree with the first two paragraphs of your comment. :)
Aaron:
Thanks for the endorsement, but why don't you agree with my third or fourth paragraph :-).
I agree, I agree, I agree. I see wikipedia STUB pages and articles with trivial content rank higher in the Google SERPs than far superior content which is optimized and has a nice number of links. I think that Google needs to crank down the value of internal link juice or at least look at content depth.
I would like to see wikipedia place nofollow tags to all of their STUB pages.
I really doubt that will happen especially when they actually request people to link to stubs example
No. No. And No.
Stub pages should be marked as NOINDEX until they are no longer a stub.
G-Man
>In my ideal world, Wikipedia would add nofollow to their untrusted links, but work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the nofollow attribute.
> They're halfway to your dream Matt. Here's to hoping they don't go any further :)
C'mon the last part can Google do themselves, because that is what they already used to do in the past. I don't have to be a Google engineer to determine trustworthy links at wikipedia. Three Hints.
1. ARTICLE MAIN SPACE ONLY 2. LINK AGE 3. INTERNAL WIKIPEDIA LINKING (especially CATEGORIES)
I can spell it out if needed.. ooh.. I already did. Well, Invoice is in the mail .. What is the Street Number again in Mountain View? ;)
If I was wikipedia, I would have done it a long time ago. And I'm a link slut.
Even link sluts need condoms when putting out so much. Don't wanna end up with a nasty LTD (Link Transmitted Disease).
Many SEOs get mad about engines and sites taking away their low hanging fruit but let's face it people, part of being an SEO is to evolve and see these things coming. If we didn't evolve, we'd all still be loving crappy link exchanges and FFAs.
So in short (for you complainers) Don't get mad, get better at being an SEO already.
it's true that the spam level will be reduced... but there are still some valuable pages on wikipedia, which deserve a "follow" link...
I think in the forseeable future that Matt's dream will come true. Hopefully it will cut the spam down even more and improve the quality of wikipedia.
In my opinion having links pointing to your site on Wikipedia is still profitable since the Wikipedia databases are not only used on wikipedia.org.
Moreover I don't believe that search engines do not consider links labeled with "nofollow". If this trend continues, the value of "nofollow"-links for search engines might become almost the same as of normal links.
Obviously a much needed move by Wikipedia. As everyone mentioned it will definitely cut down on spam. It is to bad though that the WHOLE "SEO" community was mentioned and didn't seperate the spammers...atleast it looked that way in my eyes.
OK I went on record here that rel=nofollow was useless and pointless. That it did not slow spam and people that contribute real comments are worthy of a full link anyway.
Someone called me on it (you know who you are) and asked why I use them on my blog, this was the result.
Killing the No Follow at Comtech News
No more nofollow on ComTech News.
So if nothing else I put my money where my mouth is,
Jack Spirko
This will certainly cut down on the spam but it was once a great resource for SEO.
PS wiki search sucks!!!
I think this means nothing.
1. SEs seem to be ignoring the command.
2. Adding it to blogs (the original reason) has done NOT ONE THING to cut down on comment spam.
Nofollow may be fast becoming the most useless command on the net,
nofollow won't prevent WikiPedia spam any more than it has prevented blog spam. nofollow improves the quality of the SERPS, not the quality of the sites that use it.
If anything, the WikiPedia pages may rank
Editorializing doesn't seem to scale well. WikiPedia is the new DMOZ.
This is very wise for wikipedia. It increases the ratio of editorially given links in their documents. It also reduces the incentive for linkbuilders who edit wikipedia articles outside of their area of expertise for the purpose of making their links look legit.
This call by wikipedia will decrease spam and preserve article quality.
It does not stop the problem. Some linkbuilders will still grub wikipedia links, but now only for the traffic instead of for the link juice.
Agreed. There are thousands of Wikipedia pages that gets 4-figure traffic and up - still making it worth the effort for spammers and honest SEOs alike.
I also think this makes a lot of sense for Wikipedia. Posting links for new sites or those which haven't been crawled in awhile, though, seems like it would still help, just to get the spiders to visit and index the site...
And this, Rand, is exactly why spammers don't really give a damn about nofollow. After all, all they really want is for their pages to be found especially if they're throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks!
G-Man
THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA !!!!!
NOFOLLOW Is a cowardly way out of accepting responsibility. Only cowards use nofollow !!!
Everyone knows the value of getting a good link - untile a day ago Wikepedia had made #1 on Google & Yahoo for: Search Engine Optimization .....breaking a two year run by a well known SEO.
Now Wikipedia comes up on the top 20 for thousands of competative queries
Even this blog once did a topic about its year-end STATS and showed how my social sites were linking to it.
How would everyone like it, if all those backlinks converted to NOFOLLOW until they recieved a reciprocal link
That will be the trend if this continues (what's in it for me)
Listen to SearchEnginesWeb - do away with the NoFollow ASAP
NOFOLLOW Is a cowardly way out of accepting responsibility. Only cowards use nofollow !!!
Odd. I've always thought it is an efficient way of well.. not wasting time.
Odd, I am seeing nofollow on some pages, but not others. Surely they have only one central code source?
It should be on all outbound links... Wikimedia, their software, should be adding it in... Which pages do you see that don't have nofollow?
Hi Joost!
Its there now on the ones I checked yesterday. I'm thinking it was a caching issue. Should have thought of that :(
Good, that's what I thought ;)
It will be interesting to see what will happen with the really niche SERPs where a wikipedia link could make a big difference.
It wasn't the only alternative and this effectively turns Wikipedia into a black hole of link equity.
It is hard enough to rank against Wikipedia stubs as it is.
I proposed a much easier to implement system in a blog post today that would meet Matts ideal situation.
I honestly hate the idea of more nofollow than less, and how is Google meant to handle duplicate content if it can't count links to reference work?
Given that Wikipedia ranks for almost all terms well - the traffic from a well placed link is substantial enough without the "link love"; so we cant really complain if they do change it.
I suppose that since I never really trusted Wikipedia, that this just makes things rather reciprocal. :)
It was mentioned elsewhere, but the value in spamming Wikis aren't just for the link equity, but for the pure traffic. If a wiki is ranking for a highly competitive term, then it makes sense to have a link from that page, "no follow" or not. Thus, I don't expect this to really solve Wiki's problems; it is a community and management issue.
Cygnus
It may no longer pass PageRank ...but I have a feeling the engines will still rely on Wikipedia for determining relevancy. It is just too good of a resource.
lol... that would be really sneaky... but I think that it is a good idea.
The biggest problems with SE's and WikiPedia is that SE's don't seem to have found a way yet to classify "stubs" (WikiPedia term for articles that have been determined to be incorrect or incomplete), as they still rank these stubs very highly...
Problem is that spamming these stubs is easy too, since admins aren't watching those that closely (oops, did I say that ;) )
But do remember that Wikipedia could solve that - a page that is identified as a stub could have a meta robots noindex, nofollow put on it! Thats an easy one - but will they make the effort? (and if you can point me to where to make the suggestion I will happily make it)
This will be about as effective at stopping Wikipedia spam as it was for stopping blog spam. People thought nofollow would put a dent in blog spam and if anything it had the reverse effect. This doesn't really solve the problem, only the symptom. The problem is that links are a major part of how search engines rank pages, and there is a large financial incentive to ranking high. Until search engines learn to rank by variables other than links, the large(high trust) websites that rely on user-generated content are going to be extremely vulnerable to link spam. To think otherwise is foolish.
Well, not everyone thinks that SEOs are a bunch of link spammers. Some people think that SEOs are people who write "nonsense designed to do nothing but attract a Digg." see.... https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/... Maybe link baiter will replace link spammer as the new SEO.
Wiki links are no better than guestbook links in many ways therefore I applaud the move and hope it sticks.
In the end, I predict it will be easier for me to get some links to stick now. I'm more interested in being an authority for a subject than link juice anyways.
I am somewhat conflicted about the whole idea. In terms of battling spam it will likely have a positive effect (however I doubt that it is going to FIX it.) However it does seem to go against the idea that a link from a high trusted site is supposed to be a vote, and the legit links on wiki should be getting a vote.
I may be biased though, I have a few sites that are linked from Wikipedia (legit).
They're learning fast... The admin who mailed me that they added nofollow is one of the people trying to learn from the SEO community, and some have even proposed working with the SEO community to get a way to prevent spam which makes everyone happy. Matt's dream might still come true :)