Skip to main content

Wikipedia Must Rollback the Rel=NoFollow Change

Wikipedia doesn't want to become the playground of spammers so they implemented a major change today that makes their website less interesting to spammers.

Any URL on Wikipedia website that points to a location other than en.wikipedia.org is now stuffed with rel=nofollow tag meaning Wikipedia won't help bring any Google juice for your site.

So whether it's the CNN website or a PayPal phishing site or an illegal Viagra store, Wikipedia will have the same policy for all - we don't trust you so you get the rel=nofollow tag..

Now that's a worrying development. The search engines would believe that Wikipedia is the actual owner of the content and will rank their pages higher in organic listings even when the content was sourced from other "credible" sites like CNN, Engadget or even your mom's blog.

Let's illustrate with an example:

Say you discover a cool feature in the iPod (called Stylus) and blog about it. Tomorrow, the Wikipedia contributors append the details of iPod Stylus (your discovery) to the Wikipedia page on iPod. They do attribute your blog but search engines will never see that attribution (or read your blog via Wikipedia) because of the rel=nofollow tag.

Now that Wikipedia enjoys higher credibility and trust (read PageRank), the search algorithms will rank the Wikipedia iPod page higher than yours (for queries like iPod Stylus) because the search engine bots are not aware that Wikipedia's content is actually based on your blog page.

Result, your site appears after Wikipedia in the "iPod Stylus" search results and you get less or no traffic while Wikipedia gets to enjoy all the fruits of your labor..

Penalizing everyone for the spammy actions of few individuals is just not right. They should rollback this change immediately.

Related: How to Track Wikipedia Articles like Google Alerts

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include...
Read more

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts for Power Users

All features in Mozilla Firefox browser are accessible through the use of the keyboard. You can use shortcut keys to view and save Web pages, search the web, open new webpages, work with bookmarks, or find text on the current webpage. Some of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Mozilla Firefox are Ctrl+N (to open a new Firefox window), Ctrl+T (to open a new tab), Ctrl+F4 (to close the current tab) and Ctrl+S to save the current webpage. Mozilla Firefox supports many more powerful keyboard shortcuts. For instance, by pressing a simple key combination, you can manually delete autocomplete entries from the Firefox location bar or Web forms. I am sharing a list of my favorite Mozilla Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts that make web browsing with Firefox even more fun . And you also save your precious time as navigating through several layers of Firefox Toolbar menus is no longer necessary. 1. Web Search Ctrl+K moves the cursor to the Search Bar. You can then type in the terms you wish to fin...
Read more

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.
Read more