WP plugin stops plugging WP
February 2nd, 2007 12:33:36 pm pst by Sterling Camden
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.
Why would you want to use this plugin? Because Wikipedia has started adding rel=”nofollow” to all of their outbound links, denying sweet Google-juice to all of their sources. In today’s web, which is driven by search, that’s the equivalent of omitting attribution, IMHO. Plus, it is so not “the wisdom of crowds”.
I’m pretty certain that Wikipedia contains no links to any of my sites, nor do I expect any in the near future. This action is based on principle, and was inspired by Andy Beal’s battle cry (thanks, Randy).
Posted in Get Outta Here | 8 Comments » RSS 2.0
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Thank you Wikipedia for preventing spam from going to search engines, but doing nothing to prevent people from spamming the site (more info: http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/wikipedia-loses-the-google-juice/)
It would be nice if we could get this plugin in the WordPress core.
Interesting take on the issue, engtech. In my experience with comment spam, they usually attack the older posts. I had assumed this meant that they were more concerned with linkage than eyeballs, especially since most of the comments don’t make any sense. Maybe there’s a mix.
Here’s the thing about spammers: they just don’t care.
They want links and more links. It’s more work for them to stop spamming things with NOFOLLOW then it is for them to hit everything with a shotgun.
People will still click on links even if they’re NOFOLLOWed… it’s all about eyeballs in the end.
engtech is correct. Link spammers don’t care. Most of them are professional SEOs and they promise to get people better SERP ranks. There technique works quickly and they get paid. Of course, the customers website gets banned from Google the next month, but the SEO doesn’t care, he fulfilled his obligation.
But how does it improve their SERP rank if their links are nofollow’d? Or is nofollow ignored enough to not matter?
Most of them don’t even know what NOFOLLOW is.
Sorry, that is, the spammers don’t know what it is. They simply place 10,000,000 links. If 5,000,000 are NOFOLLOWed, then they still get 5,000,000 good links.
[...] I’m not taking the route like Sterling and others are by adding a WordPress plugin to add nofollow to all past and future Wikipedia links, although that’s one good way to show your disapproval. Instead I’m going to go out of my way not to link or even visit Wikipedia for anything. When I see them as the top search result I move down the list. Whenever I want to reference something from an encyclopedia I’m using Encyclopedia Britannica instead. Note to Jimmy Wales: they have ads. They are a business. It’s time for the Wikipedia to become the same. They can still be a non-profit with ads and donate the excess to worthy charities or whatever. [...]