Wikipedia Leads; Will Search Engines NoFollow?

Wikipedia has announced that all of its outgoing hyperlinks will now include the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which instructs search engines to disregard the links. Search engines infer a page’s importance by seeing who links to it — pages that get many links, especially from important sites, are deemed important and are ranked highly in search results. A link is an implied endorsement: “link love”. Adding nofollow withholds Wikipedia’s link love — and Wikipedia, being a popular site, has lots of link love to give.

Nofollow is intended as an anti-spam measure. Anybody can edit a Wikipedia page, so spammers can and do insert links to their unwanted sites, thereby leeching off the popularity of Wikipedia. Nofollow will reduce spammers’ incentives by depriving them of any link love. Or that’s the theory, at least. Bloggers tried using nofollow to attack comment spam, but it didn’t reduce spam: the spammers were still eager to put their spammy text in front of readers.