No-follow, Wikipedia and Spam

by Sapphire (January 25, 2007)

I’ve been going through the blog feeds I read, and today seems to be all about the no-follow tag, WikiPedia using it, and whether that’s going to help them prevent spam.

Let me answer the third question first: no.  I originally gave my reasoning why, but who cares?  No-follow has never stopped spammers.  Therefore, the answer is self-evident.

I like SEOrefugee’s take: that it’s a slap in the face of the webmasters who helped build WikiPedia.  And after reading GreyWolf’s post on the history of Google’s no-follow, I must admit a certain temptation to don my tin foil hat and wonder if WikiPedia’s appearance at the top of every Google page prompted Google to pressure them to use the magic tag.  In my whinier moments, I feel like Google just doesn’t want anyone to be able to launch a website unless they personally approve it.  Fortunately, Project Mai Tai continues to prove that with or without Google, you can launch a site.  The real necessity is, as always, inbound links.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re no-follow or not, since that’s only a PR thing and PR is only a Google thing.

I’m also going to copy Refugee and link to SEObook extension for FireFox.  I’ve installed it so when I’m commenting on blogs to get inbounds - something I only do in a non-spamming, adding valuable content way - I can not waste my time with blogs that are using no-follow.  It’s time for some grass-roots attempts to devalue certain dictates from web power by simply ignoring them.

You don’t want to play in the web community?  Fine, you’re not invited.  Now, run along and claw the eyes out of your competitors in the attempt to reach the #1 Google spot for “paris hilton”.  We’ll be over here, where the real web is.

Posted in SEO
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