All Wikipedia Links Are Now NOFOLLOW

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Just read at the search engine journal that Wikipedia's links are now rel="nofollow"

Sounds like a major update for SEO marketers as everybody was trying to some links in the popular web site but now this wont have any result.

Bellow is a link to the official announcement from the wikipedia mailing list :

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/061137.html

Interesting, I wonder why they didn't change this before.

This is a interesting move but a foreseeable one given the negative publicity that wikipedia has been attracting. I believe the German version of Wikipedia has had no follows for a while, I think it may not be the solution to there problems but rather cause the problem to mutate, as now people are more likely to deface or change large portions of text rather then link to there articles.

The nofollow attribute was meant to allow webmasters (in particular bloggers) to indicate that a link should not be trusted as a vote.  In other words, that the webmaster did not approve it.  It was a way of dealing with blog comment spam...sort of like a sitewide link condom - easier to allow irresponsible bloggers to add this attribute than to train them to be responsible and moderate their comments.

Wikipedia's links are the exact opposite.  The Wikipedia community goes through heart-wrenching debate and nearly tears each other limb from limb in deciding whether an external link is legitimate.  Nowhere on the Internet are links so completely moderated with a more intricate process of deciding that they are indeed trustworthy. Placing a this-link-is-not-trustworthy nofollow attribute on a Wikipedia link is an outright lie.

Wikipedia should be spanked.

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Wikipedia should be spanked

I believe this is wrong. Wikipedia was spammed very hard by "marketers" so they had to do something for that.

Like with most good things, when someone figures out how to abuse it, everyone loses.

Personally, I have been pleasantly surprised that there hasn't been more graffitti on that site. I had really figured it would become totally unusable as childish folks had their fun messing around with the entries. The whole link thing was bound to come to a head and while it is a shame, it is an understandable response.

Have you followed any of the debates of whether a link can be accepted?  The process makes the word "rigorous" seem like  jelly.

So "spanked" is a bit harsh, but if Google is not able to include the most valuable and trustworthy links of all, then its algorithm has to rely on less trustworthy links to rank websites...and that is a shame.

I've always found it near on impossible get any links i add to wikipedia to stay there before they are deleted.

I have managed to get my photography portfolio link to stay there when i added a link to a soccer teams page, and the link said something like, 'View Photos Of This Team In Action'

-- Phil

Its unfortunate. I myself have come across many great sites(which are nowhere in the SERPs) in several topic areas in wikipedia. Links from wikipedia could help these sites in improving ranks in SERPs and get due recognition. Too bad that will not happen now.

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Its unfortunate. I myself have come across many great sites(which are nowhere in the SERPs) in several topic areas in wikipedia. Links from wikipedia could help these sites in improving ranks in SERPs and get due recognition. Too bad that will not happen now.

There is nothing to worry about. There are tons of ways to get more inbound links

Its really a good news indeed.  But I posted some links which are very much relevant there, but deleted them immediately. After 10 days again I posted anohter link in other wikipedia site again they have deleted.  However, i follow the rules and respect them everywhere, sometime not getting a due credit. What mistake I could have made , anyone can help me?. Thanks

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Its really a good news indeed.  But I posted some links which are very much relevant there, but deleted them immediately. After 10 days again I posted anohter link in other wikipedia site again they have deleted.  However, i follow the rules and respect them everywhere, sometime not getting a due credit. What mistake I could have made , anyone can help me?. Thanks

wikipedia is not a promotion tool or weblog, you have to share knowledge not links

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Yeah it is hard to get your links indexed there, especially when your site has ads

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/01/campaign-to-reduce-wikipedias-pagerank-to-zero.html

  many people got angry because of that wiki move...

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  many people got angry because of that wiki move...

cool move, but it will not work since Google has wikipedia results on the top of the result with most of the searches (has nothing to do with pagerank)

Nice article about Wiki: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-engine-optimization-article-at-wikipedia-doesnt-deserve-attention
I do agree with the author, readers overestimate Wiki.

MMh... i think that the most important thing is that wikipedia provide a large number of visitors to us...

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MMh... i think that the most important thing is that wikipedia provide a large number of visitors to us...

to us ? who is this?

mmh excuse my bad english i'm italian... i mean "my site"

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yes right wikipedia is a good traffic source if your link is on some busy wiki page

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