Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
When news spread that Wikipedia was going to add the “NOFOLLOW” attribute to all external links, in an effort to reduce spam, I suggested that the issue could be resolved if everyone linking to Wikipedia, added a NOFOLLOW and effectively reduce the value of a Wikipedia link. That would take care of the issue in the same blinkered way that Wikipedia deemed appropriate.
That sentiment appeared to resonate with a few other bloggers, so I’ve decided to turn it more into a campaign. Until Wikipedia realizes that its popularity (and link value) has only come about because hundreds of thousands of lowly webmasters linked to the site without using the NOFOLLOW tag, I plan to include NOFOLLOW on any future links to Wikipedia and will display the above logo on my site as a battle-cry to rally others.
Wikipedia is all powerful, because the masses made it that way. Send Wikipedia a message and display either this sign or your own!
PS. For the record, I’m not a Wikipedia spammer and I have no links to Marketing Pilgrim from them. So this action is based on principle and not any personal loss.
PPS. Do I really think I can reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to zero? No, but it will be fun trying!
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January 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 am
Well, SEOs have always had the talent to spam bad sites to the top of the search rankings, it will be interesting to see if they have the talent to spam (yea, I know it’s not spam, but can’t think of a better term for it) a good site to the bottom of the rankings.
(in case you’re feeling offended by this comment, please realize it’s tongue-in-cheek)
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:39 am
Forgive me, but this seems a childish response.
They have very good reasons for doing it. They think they are serving the goals of their ambitious project by making it less appealing to marketers. While I wouldn’t mind some link love from WP, I don’t blame them a bit.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 am
I think Andy is more upset at their resolution to just add nofollow tags to all of their links. It seems like they wanted a quick fix, and didn’t want to take the time to implement a process to reduce spam and to allow trusted links.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:48 am
I’m still on the fence with this issue. If nofollowing will increase the quality of Wikipedia, it is really something they should go for, however chucking all of the links on the “bad” pile is a bit extreme. I think Mr. Cutts hit the nail on the head with:
“In my ideal world, Wikipedia would add nofollow to their untrusted links, but work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the nofollow attribute.”
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am
What if everyone started adding the “nofollow” link to all external links? We’d be in a huge mess. Wikipedia dominates the search results because of all the backlinks they have pointing at them.
DarkMatter, I don’t expect my response to achieve anything other than highlighting the childish action by Wikipedia. They effectively decided they didn’t like some of the kids, so kicked them all out of the play pen. Well, if every kid stopped playing with Wikipedia, they wouldn’t have to worry about sharing their toys in the first place. The phrase “biting the hand that feeds” springs to mind.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I would have to think that search marketers comprise so little of the overall population that links to Wikipedia which would include journalists, people writing research papers, web sites that contain any kind of glossary, educational sites, etc. While it might be fun to try, I think it will have little to no impact. Kind of like David fighting a million Goliaths and still with only 5 stones.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Nice call David - maybe others will pick up their own stones.
Honestly, my campaign is really just highlighting how silly Wikipedia’s knee-jerk reaction was in the first place.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Andy, don’t know if “What if everyone started adding the “nofollow†link to all external links?…” was in reply to me, but my $0.02
I do think Wikipedia has gone overboard but not many websites are in the same situation with thousands of pages of new content submitted every day, even if the work is distributed there must be a lot of poor quality/spam content to trawl through. I guess Wikipedia thinks its “brand” is strong enough that people will use it as a standalone search for specifics, or maybe they’re just relying on the fact that most people will be too lazy/not know about nofollows so they’ll keep all that link juice to themselves?
There are loads of options they could do, such as voting whether links are relevant/spammy, introducing some kind of Google-esque sandbox/waiting period for new links. I blogged about this several months ago, what would happen if hundreds of major websites start nofollowing links, it does kind of put a dent in how some search engines work. The big brands, using other sites to boost themselves up, then essentially cutting off the hands (links) that raised them to this position.
After that rant, I’ll always be nofollowing my Wiki links, just out of principle ‘cos I’m mean!
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
It would make more sense, in my opinion, for people to simply start linking to Britannica articles (which are editorially vetted and more accurate in general than the Wiki articles).
Of course I realize that link-dependent SEOs want Wikipedia to let them abuse it again, but this should be a lesson to people who refuse to learn how to do proper search engine optimization.
Wikipedia only took this action because of invasive link dropping, which is abusive. I fully applaud the decision and hope they never turn off the NoFollows.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] Voir l’article d’Andy Beal : Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
As clever as it may sound in reality the campaign will do very little to Wikipedia page rank. Too many bloggers are ignorant of how search engines work.
Hopefully it will at least get the Wikipedia team thinking.
I am surprised Matt Cutts supported the move.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Why would Matt Cutts not support it? Is there anyone more vested in combating link spam than he?
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:59 pm
It seems logical to put a nofollow on inbound links to wikipedia. As everybody can modify the content we can’t certify its quality
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
[...] At least that’s what Marketing Pilgrim is suggesting and I’d be inclined to agree.. though I generally don’t link much to WikiPedia anyway. [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:47 pm
[...] Once such blogger, Andy Beal, has launched a campaign to try and reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero via web publishers changing all of their existing natural links to Wikipedia into links which also include the NOFOLLOW tag. [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I’d rather see a campaign to get Google et al to take Wikipedia out of their search results entirely, as Shelley Powers suggested. That has more chance of making a difference.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Cry more, spammer.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
wikipedia wikipedia wikipedia !!!
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:40 pm
“I am surprised Matt Cutts supported the move. :-(”
Well, he personally asked me to enable nofollow last year, so I’m not too surprised.
“I think Andy is more upset at their resolution to just add nofollow tags to all of their links. It seems like they wanted a quick fix, and didn’t want to take the time to implement a process to reduce spam and to allow trusted links.”
Yep! It’s a quick fix until better tools are ready. I said as much in my announcement and requested that parties interested in helping with that get involved.
(Note that the majority of our sites have had nofollow on for a couple of years. Only portions of the English-language Wikipedia have had it off; but while it gets the most attention from watchers it’s also the most attractive for spammers.)
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
You’ve gotta love the bright-spark that thought it would be fun to leave three links to Wikipedia in a comment, yet forgot that Wordpress automatically ads a “nofollow” to comment links.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Thanks for the traffic, comment #18! (You *do* realize that that just *sends us traffic* and *doesn’t hurt us in any way*, right?)
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
My mistake - I assumed that you were just disreputable, didn’t realise you were hypcritical too, Andy.
Explain to us again why it’s a bad thing for Wikipedia not to give free Google rankings to any random spammer who cares to add a link, but a good thing for your blog to do exactly the same thing?
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Andy Beal,
I would love to do a follow-up story on you and the campaign you are starting. If interested, contact me- you know where to find me.
Rose Hunt
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
“Oh, and another thing” - I don’t claim the comments section of my blog is a trusted resource for information.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Andy, perhaps you’re not familiar with Wikipedia’s actual trust claims?
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:21 pm
[...] Irgendwie hab ich nur darauf gewartet, dass jetzt eine Aktion gegen die Wikipedia (via searchenginejournal) losgeht. Es ist ja auch logisch, mit gleichen Waffen zurückzuschlagen. Steht ja schon im Buch der Bücher. Für ein Auge nicht weniger als ein Auge, für einen Zahn nicht weniger als einen Zahn. [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Brion, I’m familiar with the disclaimer, but it’s kind of hard to hide behind that AND call yourself an “Encyclopedia”.
Why not just get rid of external links altogether? You’re abusing the nofollow tag. It’s supposed to be used when you link to a source that cannot be trusted or vouched for. By adding to every external link, what does that say about the trust we can place in Wikipedia? If Wikipedia is built on external information and you’ve just disowned all external links, where does that leave us?
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
It’s not an abuse, Andy; it is exactly what the nofollow tag is for. Nofollow allows you to make a clickable link without making the implied statement to machine indexers that the link is known by the site maintainer to be reliable — which is exactly what you want to be able to indicate for spam magnets such as user-submitted content.
Of course, as I’ve already said, and you’ve ignored, we would like to see a more fine-grained approach in the future which takes into account human review.
I guess it’s easier to be indignant over a misunderstanding and play a childish publicity stunt, though. (Probably more fun, too!)
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Absolutely this is a publicity stunt. I think Wikipedia over-reacted and made a hasty decision. People have been spamming Wikipedia for years, so an extra month or two to figure out a practical solution, would not have hurt.
Why not follow Matt Cutts advice?
“If an off-domain link is made by an anonymous or unauthenticated user, I’d use nofollow on that link. Once a user has done a certain number of posts/edits, or has been around for long enough to build up trust, then those nofollows could be removed and the links could be trusted. Anytime you have a user that you’d trust, there’s no need to use nofollow links.”
There has to be a better solution. I’m glad you’ve stopped by to share your side of the story - I truly do appreciate it. If this publicity stunt has helped speed up the process for a better solution, that’s all I could have hoped for. Unless you really were worried your PageRank would reduce to zero.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Congrats on making the front page on Digg Andy. I fully support your quest. Why not give some love back to the information and people who helped give it it’s power?
WikiPedia has trust. It’s built it up over time. I fully agree with allowing trusted users give trusted nofollow links.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:54 pm
That’s an interesting proposition… how about a wikipedia nofollow plugin for WordPress? I may be able to pop that out this weekend.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Well, if you use Drupal and you want to join in “nofollow me to Wikipedia” you can use the http://knaddison.com/drupal/just-say-no-follow-wikipedia-links module that I just created which automatically adds nofollow to all links to en.wikipedia.org.
Enjoy!
January 24th, 2007 at 1:21 am
“Well, he personally asked me to enable nofollow last year, so I’m not too surprised.”
…which is the same as…
“Use the source and don’t give credit back”.
This is so much against the philosophy of the web, I struggle to believe Matt would have said that.
Aren’t search engines work because the algorithms they use imitate the rules of the society? Or do you mean to say Wikipedia is above this “noise”?
January 24th, 2007 at 3:28 am
“Until Wikipedia realizes that its popularity (and link value) has only come about because hundreds of thousands of lowly webmasters linked to the site without using the NOFOLLOW tag…”
You are leaving out an important difference: The links to Wikipedia were created by those “lowly webmasters” based on Wikipedia’s merit; and most of the external links added to Wikipedia are motivated by personal gain.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Jesus Christ, first SEOs whine because Wikipedia is outranking their clients, now they whine because they’ve lost what they mistakenly thought was a link source. Those outbound links on wikipedia wasn’t passing much PageRank or link juice to begin with.
“so an extra month or two to figure out a practical solution, would not have hurt.”
That’s easy for you to say Andy. Why don’t you actually think up a solution and help code it into Wikipedia instead of waging this silly little anti-Wikipedia campaign of yours?
Here’s an idea: Use PeopleRank. Each Wikipedia member can recommend X number of members as members they trust. The amount of PeopleRank passed on depends on the recommendation he/she has gotten from other members. Links added or approved by members with PeopleRank >= X are nofollow-free.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:56 am
[...] Andy Beal calls for action, with a “nofollow links to Wikipedia” campaign. del.icio.us digg NewsVine Reddit Spurl [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Michael Martinez “It would make more sense, in my opinion, for people to simply start linking to Britannica articles (which are editorially vetted and more accurate in general than the Wiki articles).”
I thought WP was found to be *more accurate* than Britannica after a study? WP is pretty well vetted too!
January 24th, 2007 at 4:47 am
Aha, I think everyone is missing the cunning plan here.
Wikipedia uses nofollow to remove the incentive for spammers, but Google can quite easily just choose to ignore the nofollow attribute on Wikipedia without telling anyone (well except Jimbo). Everyone wins!
January 24th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Wikipedia gets the position it does by having genuinely useful articles. Wikipedia articles don’t tend to get the top stop unless they’re actually good.
Page rank is only one of the things that go into Google’s “secret sauce.” If all the sites that are part of the commercial/SEO/spam network stopped linking to Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles would still get high ranks because of their actual content, and because there would still be links to Wikipedia from plenty of noncommercial sources.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:25 am
[...] Nofollow me to Wikipedia Der Beitrag wurde am 24. Januar 2007 von Oliver Karthaus veröffentlicht Nachdem Wikipedia beschlossen hat, die Bekämpfung von Spam mit einem flächendeckenden Nofollow auf Wikipedia fortzusetzen, gibt es geteilte Meinungen. Heute bin ich sogar über die “Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero” gestolpert, bei der der Autor angeregt hat, alle Links zu Wikipedia ab sofort nur noch mit einem Nofollow zu versehen. Gar nicht dumm, auch wenn das Wikipedia kaum etwas ausmachen wird. Die Masse macht’s. Ich finde den Move von Wikipedia äußerst frech. Erst sammelt man fleißig Hunderttausende von Links und jetzt schottet man sich samt denen ab. Ich habe aber auch einen Grund, warum mich das so ärgert. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Wikipedia tries to fight Spam an SEO-Links on their platform and that is okay, but this decision is only fighting their own reputation.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:07 am
[...] This caused outrage in the blogging community who feel the whole strength of Wikipedia was created by the many hundreds of thousands of small websites all linking to the Wikipedia site without the use of the “no follow” attribute. There is one blogger called Andy Beal who has started a campaign to fight back against Wikipedia be asking all webmasters who currently link to Wikipedia to add the “no follow” attribute to the link, to try and reduce their Page Rank to zero, which I seriously think is pretty much impossible. Andy has even created an image for webmasters to display on their websites which says “NOFOLLOW me to Wikipedia” with the Wikipedia logo covered in a huge red cross. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 10:48 am
i’ll use NOFOLLOW tag to Wikipedia ..
January 24th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
[...] Il y a un logo et plein de réactions, c’est ici : Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Andy, I understand your thinking, but by us using NOFOLLOW in our own links we’d really be doing the work for Wikipedia in a roundabout way.
Does anyone feel that the more NOFOLLOW gets used, the less effective it will become? Just like any other method a search engine uses to determine ranking, eventually it gets abused to the point of it being devalued… ex: meta tags, subdomains, link farms, etc… Furthermore the easier these things are to use, the more abused they become. NOFOLLOW will eventually end up in the SEO boneyard and this will all be a moot point.
BTW - according to the Wikipedia, these things happened today in history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_24
= )
January 24th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I agree dmerton. I think that NOFOLLOW is already being used for more than it was intended for.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Andy Beal,
I asked, you didn’t answer, so I went ahead with what I had. Hope you don’t mind. It is on the front page of Associated Content after all.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/132418/wikipedia_under_attack _for_nofollow.html
January 24th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Apologies Rose, I missed your request among the others. Great article though, many thanks!
January 24th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
You’re welcome.
BTW, I love your spam protection. I wish everyone used it. I hate trying to read scrambled letters mixed in with chaotic lines.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:07 am
I’m with you. I have an Italien SEO blog and I alredy sprea the word! We will stop wikis nofollow.
Good job
January 25th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Andy, great idea!
You did get a lot of backlinks with no “additional” tags:)
I don’t see ANY problem with Wiki nofollows. Sure, I work with Wiki. But I’m getting traffic, no PR.
By the way, why everybody’s dreaming about PR???
As for me, Wiki’s rankings are great due to trust, no backlinks.
You need to work hard, if you’re going to keep interest for campaign:)
P.S. Sorry for poor English.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Andy,
I’m in!
Doug
January 25th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
[...] NOFOLLOW me to Wikipedia…read more | digg story [...]
January 25th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
[...] Andy Beal, on his Marketing Pilgrim blog, announced his Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero. [...]
January 25th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
If you’re using WordPress, may I suggest my plugin for those of you wanting to turn off your linkjuice for Wikipedia?
http://whatjapanthinks.com/wikipedia-nofollow/
January 25th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
I see you’re complaining vigorously about a bunch of volunteers not doing enough work to please you. Just to check, you have spent a lot of time removing spammy links from Wikipedia, right? In which case, I look forward to you posting the link to your Wikipedia contributions page.
Or wait? Are you offering to write the code that carefully discerns which links to use nofollow on? Don’t forget that to run on one of the world’s highest-volume web sites, your code will have to be carefully performance tested. Post a link here, and I’m sure you can get it critiqued.
No? Hmmm… Then where do you feel you get the moral authority to boss around a bunch of volunteers whom you apparently haven’t done anything to aid? Really, I’m all ears. Next maybe you can post a YouTube video of you sitting in an armchair while criticizing people people picking up litter for not doing it the way you want.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:54 am
[...] Wikipedia devient un site créé et entretenu par une communauté qui désormais ne lui donne plus rien en retour. Certains l’ont un peu en travers de la gorge comme Andy Beal qui propose une campagne contre Wikipedia qui consiste à ajouter la balise nofollow à tous les liens pointant vers l’encyclopédie en ligne pour réduire sa popularité. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 9:29 am
[...] Paul Montgomery at Tinfinger makes a case for dropping Wikipedia from Google and Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim is whipping up support for cutting off Wikipedia. Google Blogoscoped describes how they prevent spam links and many others discuss the topic in many languages. Track the nofollow tag at del.icio.us for the latest news. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 9:38 am
William, that’s the funniest comment in days, thanks for making me laugh. I tell you what, how about everyone that ever linked to Wikipedia, go back and add a nofollow to their link. That way, Wikipedia will lose it’s PageRank and spammers won’t be an issue anymore.
Better yet, we can ask Google to simply ignore ALL inbound links to Wikipedia and it will lose it’s value.
Wikipedia become popular and useful, because the community linked to it and vouched for its credibility. Not linking back (and passing PR) to that same community is hypocritical.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I still can’t wrap my head around the why you believe people have a right to get a non-nofollow link from Wikipedia.
The criticizing people people picking up litter for not doing it the way you want analogy was pretty apt, on the other hand.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:58 am
External links are used whenever Wikipedia references information that is gleaned from an external source.
Listen, I’m all for getting rid of the spam. But if an editor/volunteer ads a legitimate external source, it should pass on the PR value. If it’s a crap link, it should be removed.
Heck, if you just said that an external source link had a nofollow attribute for the first 30 days, then automatically has that attribute removed after 30 days, surely that would be enough time for the Wikipedia to weed out the spam links and disuade those spammers looking to add links in order to win a silly SEO contest.
January 26th, 2007 at 10:04 am
[...] Один из недовольных, которого зовут Andy Beal, предложил кампанию, цель которой — попытатьÑÑ ÑƒÐ¼ÐµÐ½ÑŒÑˆÐ¸Ñ‚ÑŒ PageRank википедии, аналогично вÑтавлÑÑ Ð²Ð¾ вÑе ÑÑылки ведущие на википедию, аттрибут rel=”nofollow”. Ðто врÑдли Ñработает, но ÐºÐ°Ð¼Ð¿Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑƒÐ¶Ðµ привлекла многих блоггеров, о ней напиÑали ведущие Ñетевые изданиÑ, поÑвÑщенные SEO, и проÑто интернет-СМИ. ПоÑтому, возможно, общеÑтвенноÑÑ‚ÑŒ задумаетÑÑ, и проблема иÑÐ¿Ð¾Ð»ÑŒÐ·Ð¾Ð²Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ñ nofollow где-то, кроме как в поÑтах в форумы и комментах в блогах, вÑтанет более оÑтро чем ÑейчаÑ. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 10:11 am
“why you believe people have a right to get a non-nofollow link from Wikipedia.”
Exactly, they don’t.
If I linked to every marketingpilgrim post, does that give me the right to demand a reciprocal link?
Absolutely not.
Nofollowing all external links is going overboard. But no one yet has proposed a better solution.
January 26th, 2007 at 10:18 am
[...] Actually, I think I have a clue. It’s not very complicated. SEOs think that Wikipedia is great because of how many people have linked to Wikipedia. Everyone else thinks Wikipedia is great because of its content. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Actually, people have proposed (and even created) better solutions.
Blacklist plugins:
+Wordpress blacklist plugin:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/wikipedia-nofollow/
+Drupal blacklist plugin:
http://knaddison.com/drupal/just-say-no-follow-wikipedia-links
+Andy’s policy change based upon a “30 days to no-nofollow”.
Granular solutions are out there beyond this binary “all external are nofollow” system that they currently have.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Halfdeck…if I find something valuable on your site, and I reference it on mine. Would you expect a link back to your site? Would you be annoyed if I linked but used the nofollow?
I think my idea of putting all external Wikipedia links on “probation” for the first 30 days, is viable.
January 26th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I think Wikipedia has grown in value and popularity based on its content, not because of its link popularity. While the word may have been spread by “lowly webmasters” linking to it I don’t have much argument with the decision. The reason is that Wikipedia is offering free information and strictly generates money from donations. They are not benefiting from the inbound links in the same way that we might, by building reputation and then advertising. It’s people like us on the other side that could potentially lose anything from the decision.. and we should be more worried about contributing vs leeching.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Hi Christer. Think about it though. Where did
Wikipedia get that content? Other resources, web sites perhaps?
Who contributed that content? Other web site owners maybe?
And how did anyone ever find Wikipedia to start with? Maybe following another link?
Wikipedia may be a huge powerful site, that delivers great value, now, but it wasn’t always that way.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I think you’re just beating a dead horse at this point Andy. You’re not going to convince Wikipedians over to your point of view by browbeating them.
I think several people have already offered up the best suggestion. If you want it changed, then take a leading role in changing it.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Totally agree Peter. I’m done with this topic - could you ask commenters to stop antagonizing me?
January 26th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I’ll stop antagonizing you. How’s that?
January 26th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
LOL
January 26th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed. Back on Monday we reported that Wikipedia changed all of its external links to NOFOLLOW links, and discussed why we thought it was such an awful idea. It seems we were not alone in that opinion, as Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim recently launched a campaign to reduce Wikipedia’s Pagerank to 0. Andy acknowledges that the campaign will not be successful, but is attempting to send Wikipedia a message. Like Andy, we have decided to make any further links to Wikipedia on Online Bulletin NOFOLLOW links, hopefully resulting in Wikipedia reverting this new policy. andy beal, nofollow, Site News, wikipediaBookmark to: [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 12:45 am
“By the way, why everybody’s dreaming about PR???”
Weird question. Maybe just to be reconized by search engines and get more people reading your articles?
January 29th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
[...] There is a campaign saying ‘no to nofollow‘ and there is a campaign to reduce the page rank of Wikipedia by misusing ‘nofollow’. So will you use ‘nofollow’ in all your outgoing links? By the way I haven’t used in anything except my blog comments to avoid spammers. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 7:46 am
oh, come on dude..grow up..Wikipedia is much more of a value than crappy blogs like yours AND MINE. As a student, I have always used Wikipedia to read things that are not even in the books that are regarded bibles in the areas.
So, get a life.Stop Spamming, Stop your freaking campaigns..
January 31st, 2007 at 8:00 am
[...] I was having a read here and there today about nofollow, and was left saying to myself hmmn well at least I don’t emply the damn thing, and if I do its usually with a nudge and a wink poking fun at something or other. I then fired up the firefox search status plugin and switched on the highlight nofollow option and carried on flicking through various tabs and links surprised to see the number of red rel nofollow flags popping up here there and everywhere. [...]
February 1st, 2007 at 6:00 pm
[...] Rob Watts has taken the decisions to remove the “no-follow” tag from his blog. After read about what Andy Beal and Andy Beard were up to. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Here is a plugin to do it!
http://www.tecnocracia.com.br/arquivos/dando-o-troco-na-wikipedia/lang /en
Payback on them.
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
[...] Just activated a new plugin for WordPress: wikipedia-nofollow. Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson (aka seron) says he whipped this one up over lunch, but it’s well written (for PHP) and succinct. It adds rel=”nofollow” to all links to wikipedia.org in your posts (and optionally in the comments as well) if they don’t already have that attribute. Rather than modifying the database, it operates when content is rendered — so you’re not making permanent changes. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
[...] I was having a read here and there today about nofollow, and was left saying to myself hmmn well at least I don’t employ the damn thing, and if I do its usually with a nudge and a wink poking fun at something or other. I then fired up the firefox search status plugin and switched on the highlight nofollow option and carried on flicking through various tabs and links surprised to see the number of red rel nofollow flags popping up here there and everywhere. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Now this is great linkbait. Well done!
And then SEOs wonder why Jake Average doesn’t like them.
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
[...] Nofollow and wordpress why I’m removing the rewrite I was having a read here and there today about nofollow, and was left saying to myself hmmn well at least I don’t employ the damn thing, and if I do its usually with a nudge and a wink poking fun at something or other. I then fired up the firefox search status plugin and switched on the highlight nofollow option and carried on flicking through various tabs and links surprised to see the number of red rel nofollow flags popping up here there and everywhere. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:01 pm
[...] The discussion came from the discovery that Wikipedia uses this nofollow attribute in all their posts–again, presumably to prevent spam from being indexed. This means that the folks spending time adding content to Wikipedia entries have been building something that doesn’t even get indexed by Google. The general consensus is that this is a huge disservice to everyone who uses the web since Wikipedia is regarded by many as an invaluable resource. [...]
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
[...] The news that Wikipedia will be tagging all hyperlinks to external sites with “no follow” attributes is disappointing but not shocking. Because of Wikipedia’s high rankings in search engines like Google and Yahoo, as well as the ability for almost anyone to edit or create content on the site, there undoubtedly are spam tactics in play for attempting to place links within its content. This has caused somewhat of an uproar in the SEO community, as it is very likely that the value of an inbound link is what enables a site like Wikipedia to even become popular in search rankings. [...]
February 11th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
That’s really cool to know!!
I will try joining in…
Cheers!!
Jason S
I Blog at : http://jsbi.blogspot.com
February 14th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
[...] On a related note, we have Marketing Pilgrim that’s a bit miffed about Wikipedia’s recent move towards using “nofollow” on all its external links to reduce spam. He’s thinking that people should use “nofollow” on all links to Wikipedia in protest. But the ultimate hope is that Wikipedia returns to not using “nofollow”. [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
[...] So Wikipedia is adding nofollow tags to all its links? Fine, then. We’ll all just add nofollow tags to all of our links that point to Wikipedia. Surely someone can write a Wordpress plugin that does this automatically? [...]
February 17th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
You have nofollow too on your blog ? let’s start a campain to bring your PR to 0…
February 18th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Lucian, I only use nofollow on comment links, not sites I link to from the blog. Why do I use nofollow on comments? Cos you never know when some idiot might stop by, leave a smart-ass comment and then expect to get some link-juice from me.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Kind of in the same way Wikipedia doesn’t know when some idiot might stop by and spam a link and then expect to get some link-juice from them?
February 18th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Hi Peter, glad to see you back on this.
That would be Wikipedia’s problem. If they want to let just anyone add a link to the main content, they should police it.
I don’t allow just anyone to post to my blog and if I decide that someone has contributed to the content of this site, I give them credit and a full link. Wikipedia should not penalize those who’s content has helped build Wikipedia.
Comparing links in a comments section, with Wikipedia is apples and oranges.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Haha, you’re pretty good at baiting me, that’s for sure.
But, I think that both blog comments and Wikipedia’s external links both fit quite well in the “anywhere that users can add links by themselves” that Google suggests for using nofollow tags.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I still don’t buy that argument. The external resources links on Wikipedia are the same as a “hat-tip” or “credit to” link on a blog post.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
They should be. Certainly. But, only someone truly naive would believe that they are.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
True, and only someone truly naive would believe people leave comments on blogs without thinking how it might bring traffic to their own site.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
[...] I feel that this one is wrong. The Internet should equally exchange links, its how it is the “web”. As long as the external links are relevant to the topic, they should be allowed on the page and get the credit for it. Many devlopers have become so disgruntaled at this one that they have formed a grassroots organziation named ( NOFOLLOW me to Wikipedia ). They ask that all developers add the NOFOLLOW tag to a link if they link to Wikipedia, funny if you ask me. Although a gallent effort, the effort will be futile. Wikipedia is already a powerhouse in the SEM market and even if a lot of developers did jump on, the amount required would not happen. Besides the word of mouth and technologies such as social bookmarking will happer their efforts. I just a two prong attack, perhaps using the NOFOLLOW and every devloper creating websites called Wikipedia and containing a lot of Wikipedia keywords. The combination of competition and the NOFOLLOW can be the only gallent effort. [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I am not happy about the whole thing, however as many have said, Wikipedia just has too much page rank already. Check out my blog for my full opinion on the matter: http://jfischweb.com/blog/?p=12
February 18th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Loooooooooooooordy the irony here is so thick!
February 18th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I have nothing more to add Peter, but I thought I’d bring us to 100 comments.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I wonder if adding -wikipedia.com to all our searches would affect it any? If the big G sees everyone is trying to search for information but NOT on wikipedia, I would think they would track that too and rank it less.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Considering that Wikipedia is often the only relevant result, doing that would be silly.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
The spanish Wikipedia is pure trash, I support this campaign.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
[...] Paul Montgomery at Tinfinger makes a case for dropping Wikipedia from Google and Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim is whipping up support for cutting off Wikipedia. Google Blogoscoped describes how they prevent spam links and many others discuss the topic in many languages. Track the nofollow tag at del.icio.us for the latest news. [...]
March 6th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Seriously, do the “lowly webmasters” really expect that their link into Wikipedia ensures that they will get fair treatment from the site. Thats like saying that I could link to you and you would have to link back to me.
The actual majority of Wikipedia links are likely to come from random people who link there expecting nothing back.
Of course, if you make your livelihood from the External links section of wikipedia then I suggest you read their policy on that section of articles and think up a better way to screw with PageRank for your own good. Wikipedia is a privately owned website which can do what it wants with its links and if it thinks spam is as bad as you think it is here in your comments then they are entitled to use available features to protect themselves.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
great debate, and great comments
Well wikipedia has grown too much. It has now thousands or “millions” of topics. It is time to make some changes, and put some rules. It’s simple, a better login/register user module. With that module, only registered users could review, add and edit the pages. The system with that could control who have written and what. When someone add a link, the system would send emails to registered users saying that user XPTO add a link ABC in section XPTO and the other registered users could review the link with wikipedia policies. Every new link added, should stay with nofollow for 15 days, and if a registered user review the link (let’s say in 1-2 days, the nofollow was over. If after 15 days, the link was not reviewed by no one (wich is almost impossible), the system would delete automatically the link.
With a good group of programmers this is a simple thing to do and will not take too long. Until such a system is implemented, wikipedia should be maintened has it is. A system like this or other that gives this kind of control, yes, should be implemented.
March 13th, 2007 at 6:53 am
[...] To appeal, certain blogs (like Marketing Pilgrim) are very against this idea of Wikipedia and even went all the way to include nofollow attribute to all outgoing links to Wikipedia. [...]
March 14th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
¡Fóllatelos!
March 18th, 2007 at 4:30 am
I think this is a shameful way to deceive such information-rich site. The fact is that people so-called SEO experts are encouraging people to get backlinks from popular sites like Wikipedia in order to raise there PR and search listing. People now spamming Wikipedia to get quality backlinks for none. If Wikipedia bans such shameful tactics, I will be happy to follow wikipedia.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
[...] Andy Beal has started a NoFollow campaign in a bid to reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero Until Wikipedia realizes that its popularity (and link value) has only come about because hundreds of thousands of lowly webmasters linked to the site without using the NOFOLLOW tag, I plan to include NOFOLLOW on any future links to Wikipedia and will display the above logo on my site as a battle-cry to rally others. [...]
March 21st, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I agree with all my heart.
Another blog - recommended all links to be given non-follow, for a period of 6 weeks or so, and if no one edits it ,then the link has a reason to be there.
Yet, apparently wiki does not want to listen.
Fight the power!
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
One of the things that people miss with Wikipedia adding nofollow to its links, is that downstream Wiki sites (wikibooks etc) or sites that use the mediawiki software end up with nofollow as well.
So you have people that may not even know that their external links are nofollow on their sites.
Imagine if by default people who used Wordpress and other blogging software had _all_ external links in their posts marked nofollow. These changes add up and the web loses the ability to count votes on links to determine what content is actually worthwhile.
March 22nd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Good point mincus. And then the big G would have to come up with a new plan on ranking the web =P
March 25th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Haha, you’re pretty good at baiting me, that’s for sure.
But, I think that both blog comments and Wikipedia’s external links both fit quite well in the “anywhere that users can add links by themselves†that Google suggests for using nofollow tags.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Well, SEOs have always had the talent to spam bad sites to the top of the search rankings, it will be interesting to see if they have the talent to spam.
[link removed]
April 10th, 2007 at 5:14 am
[...] “For the record, I’m not a Wikipedia spammer.” Of course you’re not, dear. [...]
April 12th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
mincus: Except the software is configurable, and if you’re setting up something as huge as MediaWiki without going through configuration, you don’t really have a business using it in the first place.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Forgot to say: This has been the default for a while, actually. Nothing has changed downstream. Wikipedia’s settings don’t affect the other MediaWikis.
April 14th, 2007 at 4:15 am
some thoughts:
1. it’s not easy to put an article up in Wikipedia let alone put links inside it. really. try it. there’s an army of deletionists inside wikipedia that will mark your article with speedy deletion if it doesn’t subscribe to wikipedia standareds
2. it’s hard enough to get second sources to be referenced by a tertiary source like like Wikipedia. I’m thinking this might discourage people to put up meaningful material there and also develope the stubs.
3. is there an alternative to wikipedia then? a wiki without the nofollow? so this is like a nofollow virus that’s slowly infecting the WWW as more downstream wikis assimilate the nofollow tags
4. I’m wondering how big G will now rank relevance … (thinking out loud)
April 14th, 2007 at 9:04 am
I doubt it discourages many people from contributing to Wikipedia. It’s a rather myopic point of view. Only SEOs even think in those terms. And, most SEOs who were submitting their links to Wikipedia are still out there submitting massive numbers of links.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Yeah, the people against this are so myopic. They just want to have an internet full of reliable organic links that can be used by search engines to find high quality content. I mean, it’s so myopic to hope that the internet could be full of relations between sites rather than a series of separate silos.
Peter, this isn’t a binary thing either. So, thinking about it that way only serves to keep your thoughts on the subject at a base level. Wikipedia has lots of options (as has been discussed earlier in the article and comments) that wouldn’t require nofollow to stop the spam.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:37 am
“They just want to have an internet full of reliable organic links that can be used by search engines to find high quality content.”
What are you drinking? SEOS don’t want “reliable organic links.” They want traffic and ranking. From Wikipedia’s POV, SEOs can go take a hike. They want people contributing to make a better Wikipedia, not whiners that are out to exploit Wikipedia.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Halfdeck - what about the web sites that Wikipedia editors cite (steal) information from in order to make up their precious information? Don’t they deserve to get something out of this? It’s not like Wikipedia has these experts that just “know” all this information. They’re getting it from other sites and probably not citing a good majority of them as it is.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Well, if Wikipedia is stealing content, they deserve a DMCA notice. A citation is a citation whether it’s nofollowed or not.
Don’t I deserve lots of links from your blog for all the witty comments I leave for you?
April 14th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Andy, I never said all outbound Wikipedia links should be nofollowed. I’m gunning for some transparancy here. Arguments get so damn convoluted when self-preservation is at stake (anyone watch Heidi try to talk her way out of getting fired from The Apprentice last Sunday?).
April 25th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Wiki is not stealing content i think, people steal from somewhere and inserts there, that why it has been popular.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:03 am
what are news about the « other way that nofollow » on wikipedia (which were supposed to be a temporary fix), by now?
May 19th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
[...] Are you really that selfish that you can’t contribute to a greater cause without wanting to know whats in it for you? I think you are Andy Beal. Perhaps we should start a drive to pull down your PR. I mean, aren’t you being the selfish one? [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:36 am
Andy, I think the idea is great and I will “FOLLOW” it
I understand the new era of NOFOLLOW because of the SPAM, this and that. Now, WIKIPEDIA? You are right when you say that they have they popularity because of “everybody”. So, I have just two links to them, and I’ll add the NOFOLLOW right now!
May 28th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Spam has been around since Al Gore invented the internets.
May 28th, 2007 at 8:43 am
For mi is Wikipedia still good source for useful info. I don’t have links on my pages on Wikipedia, but I think that external links on Wiki are not good only for SEO purposes, but also to bring traffic on these websites. When I am looking for some word on Wiki I usually follow some from external links.
May 30th, 2007 at 10:15 am
what are news about the « other way that nofollow » on wikipedia (which were supposed to be a temporary fix), by now?
———————————————
http://www.alwaysfinance.co.uk
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
[...] Že v svojem prispevku je napisal, da ne vrjame, da bi bilo to možno, le da se mu zdi zabavno. Tudi v tem prispevku ma Wikipedia povezavo in to brez nofollow, ker sem preprosto prelen, da bi popravil HTML kodo. [...]
June 13th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[...] read more | digg story Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
June 30th, 2007 at 5:34 am
[...] Anyway, when I talk about no-follow, I remember Andy of Marketing Pilgrim. I mean, have you seen his “Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero“. Its really interesting how this move made by Wikipedia made the world go nuts (Sorry Andy). [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Hehehe,
Nice idea. In any case from my own experience
the no follow tag is rather futile.
Both google and yahoo still consider no follow tags as valued links. It’s a fact.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Would be a nice try… thou I really don’t think this could ever happen
August 16th, 2007 at 9:46 am
[...] to give a link that does not have nofollow tags to wikipedia (full supporter of Andy Beal’s Nofollow me to Wikipedia Campaign). Either way, I spent a few boring nights of (ok call me a nurde) wikiling (internal linking from [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 8:24 am
…For mi is Wikipedia still good source for useful info. I don’t have links on my pages on Wikipedia, but I think that external links on Wiki are not good only for SEO purposes, but also to bring traffic on these websites. When I am looking for some word on Wiki I usually follow some from external links….
November 5th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Wikipedia only took this action because of invasive link dropping, which is abusive. I fully applaud the decision and hope they never turn off the NoFollows.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:37 am
yes !!! wikipedia is bad !!!
it is bernard savonnet, my favourite teacher of iut informatique dijon, who says that !!!
November 11th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
For mi is Wikipedia still good source for useful info.
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:17 pm
[...] play for attempting to place links within its content. This has caused somewhat of an uproar in the SEO community, as it is very likely that the value of an inbound link is what enables a site like Wikipedia to [...]
December 16th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Awesome! I just found out about this campaign - I hate nofollow and I can’t understand why Wikipedia would adopt it.
I actually despise the concept of nofollow so much that I won’t be following this campaign (although I’m already less inclined to link to Wikipedia). Nofollow is doing nothing to remove spam and everything to destroy internet community spirit and harm google rankings of new and updated media. The fact that we’re starting to see it in places it wasn’t originally intended for, like the critically-edited Wikipedia, should ultimately make the tag worthless (I hope) and lead to it being dropped by Google.
good luck with your campaign
All the best,
Ronald
January 8th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Well, if Wikipedia is stealing content, they deserve a DMCA notice. A citation is a citation whether it’s nofollowed or not.
January 27th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I am also a person that doesn’t support Wiki anymore. I am just a little guy that created a sword and weapon site here, Swords, and I took the time to add history files, research on each piece, etc. A Wiki editor actually allowed linking to some of my inner pages as resource material for content included on there site and I had no issues with that, until this rule was adopted. So someone out in the world can find my work useful, publish it somewhere, and I don’t get credit anymore? I think not. I support the no follow to them.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Wikipedia is probably the best thing to happen to the internet, besides http, widespread broadband, and all that technical stuff. It bothers me how inadequately cited all of the information is, but still, It just kills me to hear people dash on it.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Wikipedia behave like a robbers. They take content everywhere and do not even want the original source gave some rank.
Visits of my site went down by 40% after nofollow was applied. And I never spammed, never added a link to my site.
Now Wikipedia is at the same level of evil, if not even higher, as those stupid spammers. I am sure there could be much better ways to decide whether the links are relevant or not.
I hate Wikipedia since day I lost and they gain on my sites. And I am sure there must be a large number of similarly affected people, especially those that have websites with a lot of reliable and unique facts as I did.
You should be ashamed and get back to hell where you belong.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:56 am
[...] Campagne. Les anglophones protestent contre la politique “nofollow”: Wikipedia empêche les moteurs de recherche de suivre les liens vers d’autres sites (Anglais). [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I have always had a problem with Wikipedia, I mean people work hard to come up with original content and they never want to give credit where credit is due.. Anyway. Thanks for the post
April 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I really don’t agree with this. Wikipedia is great for all the ignorant people! Let them be enlightened.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:33 am
It may be great for all the ignorant people, but not great for the authors of unique content. Think about it, most of the time the re-print permission includes credit to the author of the original piece. If someone uses my work to create a book, I expect something in return, not just a line that says…”Uhm, oh yeah, this guy wrote some stuff that I used, but don’t go look him up.”
April 10th, 2008 at 4:57 am
The official claim is that links with the rel=nofollow attribute do not in