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NOFOLLOW

                                                 March 6, 2008

Just in case you don't follow what
that "nofollow" stuff is about, Let
me back up: "nofollow" is a code
you can include in the anchor tags
used to create a link in html.

Instead of this:

   <A HREF="[ref] Text</A>

You do this:

   <A HREF="[ref] rel="nofollow">Label Text</A>

What this does in effect, is it instructs a site like google not
to trace that link when it goes out indexing the web.

Google treats a link as a vote for
the importance of the thing, but
you might not want to have your           ("Hey look at the
link interpreted that way                 blatant anti-semitism
                                          on this neo-nazi
                                          site").




Wikipedia's problem is that they're a
tremendously visible site, everyone links       A problem many people
to their pages, and *anyone* can add a          would like to have.
link to those pages, including scum
trying to game google and bump up their
site's ranking.  This is an invitation to
SEO link-spammers to go beserk with
wikipedia -- and the solution wikipedia
went for is simply to opt-out of the
process.

If you write a page on some subject for
wikipedia, and it includes the half-dozen
critically important links for
understanding the subject, those links
will have no effect on google rankings.


                        (This is just a highly-visible tip-of-the-iceberg.
                        Google themselves is engaged in a constant game of
                        counter-measures against SEO-scum who would like
                        to hi-jack the mysterious, ever-changing
                        "PageRank" algorithm.  None of us really know what
                        kind of compromises they've engaged in to prevent
                        PageRank from becoming an obvious joke.)


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