"Reaction [beta]"
Wikipedia "hides" its links 23 Jan 2007
Wikipedia has begun tagging all of the external links on its site "nofollow," which will render them invisible to many search engines. The world's favourite online encyclopedia says that this action is unavoidable because of the mischief caused on its site by spammers and SEO schemers. Whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or plain unavoidable is a matter of debate.
At Etre, we think it's a bad thing. The majority of sources cited in Wikipedia are valuable (invaluable, even), yet as a result of this decision they'll no longer get the credit they deserve for appearing there - and this means they can expect to see their seach rankings slide. This seems to go against the grain of what the internet is about. As Nick Carr puts it:
"Although the no-follow move is certainly understandable from a spam-fighting perspective, it turns Wikipedia into something of a black hole on the Net. It sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases any."
Search engine expert Philipp Lenssen agrees:
"Wikipedia gets valuable backlinks from all over the web, in huge quantity, and of huge importance - normal links, not "nofollow" links; this is what makes Wikipedia rank so well - but as of now, they're not giving any of this back. The problem of Wikipedia link spam is real, but the solution to this spam problem may introduce an even bigger problem: Wikipedia has become a website that takes from the communities but doesn't give back."
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5 comments so far
Laurence Veale 23 Jan 2007 01:30 PM
I was reading about this over the weekend and felt the same way.
If I add value to the conversation or the user in the first place, should that value not be recognised elsewhere, i.e. on search engine results pages?
For this reason that we've never had "nofollow" on our blog comments, which I've discussed in my recent post, Nofollow? No way. am I adding value? ;)
Do you guys use nofollow on your blog?
Simon 23 Jan 2007 02:52 PM
Laurence: Thanks for your comment (Enjoyed your blog entry too).
Wikipedia's decision to employ the "nofollow" attribute reminds me of the sort of “justice” handed out by teachers during my school days. “Unless somebody owns up, you’re all in detention!” It always seemed unfair to me, that everyone had to suffer as a result of the behaviour of an unruly few. (I've never heard a judge say “Well, it’s unclear who committed this murder, so let’s give ALL the suspects a life sentence!” for example)
OK, so rooting out the spammers and deleting their messages is a real problem – but a heavy-handed solution that also punishes those who have something of genuine interest to contribute is surely a bad thing.
This is why we’ve chosen not to use "nofollow" on our blog.
Jay 28 Jan 2007 12:53 PM
Etre dudes,
you totally use the nofollow on your blog. That guy, Lawrence's links are flagged rel="nofollow". Probably a Wordpress thing
Simon 28 Jan 2007 01:54 PM
D'oh! How embarrassing. We've been making a few behind-the-scenes MT upgrades over the last few weeks so they must have crept back in then. The problem has now been fixed. (Sorry about that :-)
SEO 22 Jul 2007 07:23 AM
yeah… those stupid wiki’s!
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow to them?
Have a good one.