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randfish
Wikipedia Finally Makes the Right Decision

Posted by randfish on Sun (1/21/07) at 11:34 PM Link Building

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 :)

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Joost de Valk (196) Joost de Valk
Sun (1/21/07) at 11:55 PM
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 :)
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am9905d (59) am9905d
Mon (1/22/07) at 01:09 AM
It will be interesting to see what will happen with the really niche SERPs where a wikipedia link could make a big difference.
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AndyBeard (84) AndyBeard
Mon (1/22/07) at 01:26 AM
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?

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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Mon (1/22/07) at 12:44 PM

It wasn't the only alternative and this effectively turns Wikipedia into a black hole of link equity.



Links provide four points of value:

Visibility
Traffic
Anchor text
Internal PageRank

I don't see that Wikipedia has become "a black hole of link euity". Their Internal PageRank will most likely be distributed evenly across all Web sites. That's a good thing.

All people really lose is the anchor text and, frankly, too many SEOs use it as a crutch anyway.
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AndyBeard AndyBeard
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:00 PM
They are also used to determine duplicate content and the origin of ideas.

Do a blogsearch for Wikipedia and references to it being a "black hole" for link equity

None of them are currently linking back to my blog, where the term was first used

The number one listing for digital camera might well change to Wikipedia in the next few days as the number one and two currently used to have a link on the Wikipedia page that was followable.

I wonder how much material was used from those sites as a reference.
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leadegroot leadegroot
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:27 PM
The 'black hole' effect concerns me - we tell people to link out, because passing PR is not a bad thing, but are we now going to see Wiki move up the rankings because wiki doesn't pass the love to the topic-related sites that it used to?
The number of results wiki dominates already is bad enough - will it get worse? :(

I do wonder if the engines shouldn't introduce some sort of reverse-penalty; if all your outbound links on a page are condomed, then you suffer a ranking penalty.
I wonder if that wouldn't improve the results?
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Tue (1/23/07) at 08:40 AM

...but are we now going to see Wiki move up the rankings because wiki doesn't pass the love to the topic-related sites that it used to?



That is highly unlikely.

(Internal) PageRank is not necessarily the deciding factor in search results. It has absolutely no impact on determining relevance, which is how content is first sorted.

And people can pretty easily outrank Wikpiedia articles for a variety of topics. I do it in many verticals.
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AndyBeard AndyBeard
Tue (1/23/07) at 09:04 AM
That flies in the face of linking content to other relevant content.

Maybe internal relevance is less important than external, or given less weighting, but linkage is one way of adding value to duplicate content.

Edit: One additional point, if internal relevance wasn't important, how would a Wikipedia stub outrank sites with 3000 backlinks? (yes that has happened to me) Edited by AndyBeard on Tue (1/23/07) at 09:12 AM
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Tue (1/23/07) at 08:41 AM
Unintentional duplicate.

Matt: When I clicked on the ADD button nothing appeared to happen. Edited by Michael Martinez on Tue (1/23/07) at 08:44 AM
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Tue (1/23/07) at 08:42 AM
Unintentional duplicate. Edited by Michael Martinez on Tue (1/23/07) at 08:44 AM
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leadegroot (77) leadegroot
Mon (1/22/07) at 02:03 AM
Odd, I am seeing nofollow on some pages, but not others.
Surely they have only one central code source?
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Joost de Valk Joost de Valk
Mon (1/22/07) at 02:07 AM
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?
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leadegroot leadegroot
Mon (1/22/07) at 02:02 PM
Hi Joost!

Its there now on the ones I checked yesterday.
I'm thinking it was a caching issue.
Should have thought of that :(
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Joost de Valk Joost de Valk
Mon (1/22/07) at 11:35 PM
Good, that's what I thought ;) Edited by Joost de Valk on Mon (1/22/07) at 11:36 PM
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Search Engines WEB (78) Search Engines WEB
Mon (1/22/07) at 04:53 AM
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 Edited by Search Engines WEB on Mon (1/22/07) at 04:54 AM
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Elena Elena
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:25 AM
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.
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EGOL (872) EGOL Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 05:55 AM
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. Edited by EGOL on Mon (1/22/07) at 07:06 AM
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sherwoodseo sherwoodseo
Mon (1/22/07) at 06:44 AM
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. Edited by sherwoodseo on Mon (1/22/07) at 06:50 AM
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davidmihm (483) davidmihm Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 06:43 AM
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...

randfish Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 04:49:38 PM

mbarr - Adam Lasnik & Tim Converse both said on a panel today at SES Chicago that they don't "obey" the no following part of nofollow. Both agreed that a more accurate name woudl actually be "nolinkjuice" - it doesn't give anchor text benefit or link pop benefit. They still get crawled as a discovery method.

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GeoffreyF67 GeoffreyF67
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:30 PM
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
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AndrewRedfern (1) AndrewRedfern
Mon (1/22/07) at 06:43 AM
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.
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Cygnus (90) Cygnus
Mon (1/22/07) at 06:51 AM
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
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3PointRoss (2) 3PointRoss
Mon (1/22/07) at 07:00 AM
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).
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Jeremy Luebke (168) Jeremy Luebke
Mon (1/22/07) at 07:28 AM
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.
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Peter T Davis (7) Peter T Davis
Mon (1/22/07) at 07:34 AM
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....
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/...
Maybe link baiter will replace link spammer as the new SEO.

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oddcomments (5) oddcomments
Mon (1/22/07) at 07:51 AM
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.
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EGOL EGOL
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:04 AM
lol... that would be really sneaky... but I think that it is a good idea.
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Joost de Valk Joost de Valk
Mon (1/22/07) at 11:38 PM
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 ;) )
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leadegroot leadegroot
Tue (1/23/07) at 01:14 AM
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)
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Blackbeard (35) Blackbeard
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:22 AM
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.
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Selkirk (5) Selkirk
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:30 AM
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.
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jjspirko (8) jjspirko
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:36 AM
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,

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ROIGuy (20) ROIGuy
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:37 AM
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, http://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. Edited by ROIGuy on Mon (1/22/07) at 09:38 AM
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Aaron Pratt Aaron Pratt
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:43 AM
ROIGuy - I agree with the first two paragraphs of your comment. :)
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ROIGuy ROIGuy
Mon (1/22/07) at 03:15 PM
Aaron:

Thanks for the endorsement, but why don't you agree with my third or fourth paragraph :-).
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EGOL (872) EGOL Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:10 AM

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.



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.
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am9905d am9905d
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:26 AM
I really doubt that will happen especially when they actually request people to link to stubs
example
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GeoffreyF67 GeoffreyF67
Mon (1/22/07) at 02:26 PM
No. No. And No.

Stub pages should be marked as NOINDEX until they are no longer a stub.

G-Man
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stokelake (13) stokelake
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:17 AM
Rand, i assume this means that your page strength tool needs to be amended, i.e. take out the wikipedia links section. Edited by stokelake on Mon (1/22/07) at 10:18 AM
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Aaron Pratt (178) Aaron Pratt
Mon (1/22/07) at 10:18 AM
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
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SEO Practices (91) SEO Practices Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 11:43 AM
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?


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jjspirko (8) jjspirko
Mon (1/22/07) at 12:41 PM
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 http://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
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Mon (1/22/07) at 12:52 PM

Mark Barrera at MasterLink reported on this a while ago ...



His test was invalid.

Frankly, many of the comments posted here are very disappointing, as they underscore just how much ignorance continues to flow through the SEO community regarding these matters.

This ain't rocket science.
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randfish randfish
Mon (1/22/07) at 01:11 PM
Michael - it's my opinion that your criticism, without suitable backup evidence and a point of your own does more of a disservice than the misinformation. Simply saying that one disagrees and it should be obvious that someone else is wrong is no help at all. It's one of the patterns I dislike most.

On this specific issue, I think I even agree with you - that nofollow isn't always interpreted correctly by folks, but the style and animosity seem perplexing from someone who has the ability to provide salient information. Edited by randfish on Mon (1/22/07) at 01:12 PM
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AndyBeard AndyBeard
Mon (1/22/07) at 09:23 PM
Here is one additional test I like to refer to because it has nice pictures and is easy for people to understand.

http://www.macalua.com/2006/11/03/nofollow-ya...
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Tue (1/23/07) at 07:41 PM

...it's my opinion that your criticism, without suitable backup evidence and a point of your own does more of a disservice than the misinformation....



I could say it's a disservice for you to endorse an obviously flawed test, Rand. There are several problems with his test, the first of which is that he wrongly attributed a promise to Google that they never made (he quoted a Searchenginewatch post rather than Google's original post as written by Matt Cutts, which differed from what was shared on SEW).

This is so typical of SEO community "tests" and analysis, and the best service you and I can provide is to challenge all such tests and insist that people hold themselves to higher standards.
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jjspirko jjspirko
Tue (1/23/07) at 07:52 PM
Mike,

You need a pill man. You can disagree with out being nasty. The reality is you can criticize the test but can you explain the results. Or do you just want to toss them on semantics.

Jack
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Michael Martinez Michael Martinez
Tue (1/23/07) at 08:32 PM

You need a pill man. You can disagree with out being nasty.



You and I clearly have different ideas of what constitutes "being nasty".
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CarstenC (102) CarstenC Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 03:51 PM
>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? ;)



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SearchStudent (163) SearchStudent Premium Member
Mon (1/22/07) at 08:57 PM
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.
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jjspirko (8) jjspirko
Tue (1/23/07) at 12:21 PM
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 Edited by jjspirko on Tue (1/23/07) at 12:24 PM
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seoteam (28) seoteam
Wed (1/24/07) at 09:28 AM
This will certainly cut down on the spam but it was once a great resource for SEO.

PS wiki search sucks!!!
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Tony Adam (8) Tony Adam
Wed (1/24/07) at 12:34 PM
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.
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Michal W (7) Michal W
Thu (1/25/07) at 08:01 AM
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.
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bogdan lebu (143) bogdan lebu
Wed (3/28/07) at 03:24 PM
it's true that the spam level will be reduced... but there are still some valuable pages on wikipedia, which deserve a "follow" link...
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Chris Rothwell (148) Chris Rothwell
Wed (3/28/07) at 03:31 PM
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.
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