More to follow: wikis without nofollow

Submitted by Kasper Souren on July 24, 2009 - 21:56
I've come to realize that it's silly that most wikis are using nofollow by default. In fact, it seems that the majority of the most visited websites are not contributing to a healthy way for spreading pagerank. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Wikipedia and Delicious are all adding rel="pleasefollow" to links added by their users. I'm sure it helps them in the fight against spam but it also makes it much harder for smaller sites to appear in the top at all. It's probably time for a more appropriate system, though it's hard to figure out what this would look like - and it needs the support of exactly these top sites, who will probably loose by leveling the playfield for lesser websites. In order to add my own 2 cents  I've installed the Nofolllow Free plugin for Wordpress on this blog.  And I've started de-nofollowing a couple of wikis I'm involved in. I'm curious to see the effect, whether I will be fighting more spam and if people will pick up on this by contributing more and hopefully doing likewise for their own wikis. The links on all of these wikis deserve receiving some google juice: More to follow!

Comments

Submitted by Rent Brandon (not verified) on July 30, 2009 - 17:04.

Well, it looks like you

Well, it looks like you posted almost a week ago and I do not see any spam - or any other comments on this blog for that matter. I must assume you have blocked all comments that you deemed spam. Have you received a lot of spam so far?

I am really interested in the performance of the wiki's with regard to spam. I believe it is a fine line to walk between giving incentive to others to contribute and potential abuses by spammers. Since posting this blog, have the number of wiki updates increased with external links?

Submitted by New Tampa SEO (not verified) on August 28, 2009 - 02:35.

This is an interesting

This is an interesting concept, but with a wiki, specially a small one, doesn't it make it much harder to control spam? SEO's are always looking for somewhere to place a link on a good PR site, yours truly included. It is our job to find high quality sites to link to us and our customers, so anyone offering this for free is a target, even if it is spam, isn't it?

With your list above, the concept of the P2P foundation seems the most sound, only registered / approved users can post at all to the wiki and that wiki looks well developed. I just wonder how you would handle spam if your other sites received contributions in the way of countless external links. Wouldn't it be too much effort to chase away all of the "bad stuff"?

Submitted by Kasper Souren on August 28, 2009 - 16:55.

Hey Rob, it's not so hard to

Hey Rob, it's not so hard to deal with spam - as long as you're on it fast enough. I've had a bunch of spam on one wiki and turned all new articles into stubs. So it was a bit of work, but it actually led to a nicer wiki. I don't think it's a problem if SEO people are using these wikis to add links, as long as it's in the right place! If there would ever be countless external links it would just be a matter of organizing them properly - and wikis are great for that!

Practically, I moved the link to your company to http://cashwiki.org/en/Search_engine_optimization :)

Submitted by Orlando Rentals (not verified) on October 14, 2009 - 15:45.

Hey Kasper, that makes sense,

Hey Kasper, that makes sense, but where do you draw the line on valuable content versus actual link spam? For example, with this reply, I am now linking to another site by using a different Name and Website, even though I am the same author of the previous comment.

I am kind of "fighting with myself" on this one. While I disdain the "no follow" links, if everything was open to user inputs including links without a no follow tag, it just seems to me any site with a good page rank would get "slammed" by anyone needing good incoming links and the biggest problem would be moderation. I guess with a new site it is less of a problem, as user interaction is most important, even if some of it is garbage. I just worry about "the long run" and having to eventually become another "no follow" guy.

I like what you did on the cash wiki site and I tried to expand on it a little for you.

Submitted by Kasper Souren on October 14, 2009 - 23:06.

I don't know where I would

I don't know where I would draw the line, it's a subjective choice.

For example, your comment is definitely adding to this discussion so it's valuable.
For example, I don't think Cashwiki would be run over by spambots as long as there is some control, even with a good PageRank. If it had a good PageRank I would put ads on it and it would be worth properly fighting any spam that shows up. And by rewarding valuable content people are encouraged to participate in the community.

Hitchwiki, for example, is a PR5 site, no nofollow, with a healthy community. Spammers give it a try sometimes but are usually blocked the same day.

Thanks for the edits on Cashwiki! :)

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