Bill Hartzer

Wikipedia Nofollow Links Equals Double Standards

Wikipedia has double standards.

If you haven’t heard, Wikpedia is now adding the nofollow attribute to links on their site. This essentially means that if you have a wikipedia link then you won’t get any search engine “credits” for having the link there. You’ll still get traffic, so I would still make sure your site is listed in there if possible.

Dave Naylor pointed out that the nofollow links won’t show up until the link or page is edited. So, if you aren’t listed and your competitor is listed in Wikipedia then you might want to go edit the page so that the link is then “nofollowed” or changed so that there’s a nofollow attribute on the link.

I had originally heard (I think from Webmasterworld or Search Engine Roundtable) about the Wikpedia nofollow links but wasn’t aware that the links wouldn’t be nofollowed until the page is edited.

Graywolf is also talking about the Wikpedia issue:

I’m not exactly sure what caused all this secondary fuss about no-follow and reviews lately but I think it’s time someone pointed out that Google is being extremely hypocritical about the entire thing and using fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to corral web publishers to their way of thinking.

He talks about the fact that it’s important to look at the whole entire issue by starting with the history of nofollow and Wikipedia. Let’s remember that the original premise behind Nofollow is to try to stop comment spam and link spam in general. It’s interesting to note the fact that Graywolf points out a history of having a hypocritical contradictory approach.

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2 total comments, leave a comment.
  1. Utah Search Engine Optimization
    Nov 18th 2007

    It’s funny to look back on this and see that adding nofollow didn’t get rid of spam. They still have a huge problem with it.

  2. Minnesota Entertainers
    May 7th 2009

    The whole nofollow thing is exactly why I never created a Wikipedia page for my business (aka, myself, since I’m a performer).

    But if you’re right about the page being dofollow until someone edits it, I think I’ll go ahead and try it, since I know nobody will want to edit my boring little wikipedia profile.


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