Fark and Wikipedia: Rel=Nofollow
January 28th, 2007
Jimmy Ruska today pointed out that fark has added the Rel=Nofollow tag to its outgoing links. Wikipedia just added Rel=Nofollow tags as well.
What is Rel=Nofollow?
Google (and other search engines) decide what content is the best partially by how many people link to it. Links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute do not influence the link target’s position in the search engine ratings.
Another way of putting it… linking to something is like voting for it. By creating a link you tell the search engines that you think it is good content. The links of high ranked sites like wikipedia and fark are even more powerful.
Death by Power
In order to get these powerful links, people spam popular sites. This corrupts the purity of these sites. Soon the editors are spending more time sorting through spam links than doing what they want to do. By killing the strength of their links, they hope to decrease the evil spam behavior.
Is Rel=Nofollow bad?
One of the wonderful things about the internet is that the little guy still has a chance to be the best. Getting linked by digg, slashdot, or fark can instantly boost content to a respectable place within google. Getting a wikipedia link tells google that the content is a good source of information.
Now imagine a world where all the big players use rel=nofollow. Suddenly the source of peer review has diminished. For the search engines it becomes more of a numbers game and reputation becomes less important. Will the little guy still honestly be able to get to the top?
I hate link spammers as much as the next guy. Rel=Nofollow just does not seem to be a very graceful solution.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I think that the Wikipedia nofollow change will change the face of the internet in a significant way.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:33 am
[…] Wikipedia is heading back to using rel=”nofollow” attributes in links to diminish the value of links it provides to external sites. This is due to link spam, and may just be (as it has been in the past) a temporary measure. As an SEO (no, not link spammer) having a Wikipedia link to quality content on your web-site is highly valuable when it comes to helping your site to rank well in SERPs - however, it’s been suggested (by Brad Fallon) that this was exploited by link spammers recently in an SEO competition who weren’t worried about whether or not the links would stick around. Rather they simply spammed in the hope that their links would stay up long enough so that they would get indexed by Google, and give them a (short term) advantage in the SEO competition which stuck around long enough to help them win. […]
January 30th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
[…] Rel=Nofollow I never liked the “nofollow” concept. It’s a nasty hack to cover up Google’s own deficiencies. Seeing Wikipedia and others give into this temptation is distressing. It creates a one way street. Where would they be without volunteers and sources? (tags: nofollow search engine) […]