Ouch. I think I’m feeling wikipedia’s nofollow.
As most of my readers have probably already heard elsewhere, wikipedia recently reintroduced their nofollow tag on outbound links to try and prevent spam from SEOs.
Secretly, I believed this might have been a bit of a trick and that wikipedia was a large enough site that they might have gotten in touch with Google directly and informed them that they were putting on a nofollow tag to dissuade spammers, but that perhaps Google should (unspokenly) ignore that tag.
As always in SEO, you can never really be sure, but I think that today and yesterday the discounting of wikipedia links caught up to me in a very real way. The site I’ve mentioned on this blog in the past–that I started on October 1st and that was getting around 1,500 to 2,000 uniques daily–had a fairly limited number of IBLs. Maybe 500 or so, but they were good ones and the site is a genuinely useful, good site. I think we had 12 Wikipedia links at last count, all valid and longstanding, based on contributions we had offered.
Yesterday, however, our traffic from Google was literally reduced to a third of what it had been before. Simultaneously, we got some of the best links I’ve ever attained in all my days of SEO. I wish I could brag with these here, but I just don’t feel comfortable posting URLs, etc. on an SEO blog 
I’m sure you understand. Anyway, the only reason I could possibly see for this very dramatic reduction in traffic is either an algo change or, in my opinion more likely, the impact of Google’s recognition of Wikipedia’s new nofollow policy. After all, 12 PR5+ links from an authority site like Wikipedia, with valid and helpful anchor text is a pretty significant contribution to a site with only 500 or so unique IBLs.
Of course this is all anecdotal and theory, as always with SEO, but it seems to me that it’s the only variable that changed and also that it happened just when I would expect Google to have had time to recrawl and recalculate the Wikipedia links. Food for thought. Please let me know if you’ve had similar (or contrary) experiences!
Indeed Wikipedia has had no direct contact with Google. Quite apart from the two orders of magnitude that separate the volume of traffic to the two sites, remember Wikipedia is managed by volunteers in their spare time; getting hold of Google would be pretty difficult, unless the Wikimedia Foundation were involved (and it would be tricky even then).
If you’re relying on Wikipedia article spam to draw in your traffic, then you have a flawed model – regardless of whether or not you consider the links to be appropriately placed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a web directory. Please figure out other ways to bring in visitors.
Alright, I’ll try to reply to this wacky comment with my nice cap on.
“Indeed Wikipedia has had no direct contact with Google. Quite apart from the two orders of magnitude that separate the volume of traffic to the two sites, remember Wikipedia is managed by volunteers in their spare time; getting hold of Google would be pretty difficult, unless the Wikimedia Foundation were involved (and it would be tricky even then).”
Your mention of differing orders of magnitude between the two sites has absolutely no bearing on anything related to the discussion. It’s like saying Google couldn’t get in contact with Urchin (analytics prior to the acquisition) because Urchin’s site was less trafficked. Moving along… Wait a second–I thought dmoz was run by volunteers? Oh that’s right, it is!
I also thought Google used their data to power their own directory… Oh yeah, they do! Apparently that volunteer-based site didn’t have too much trouble getting a hold of Google 
Second, I in no way indicated that I’m relying on Wikipedia ‘article spam.’ In fact, I’m not even sure you read the post I made, in which I described the links we had from Wikipedia as “all valid and longstanding, based on contributions we had offered.” I’m pretty sure that’s what wikipedia WANTS you to do
They depend on this kind of help, and encourage referencing (i.e. linking) when appropriate.
Finally, I in no way indicated that I was relying on Wikipedia. I really think you missed the point of the post. I wasn’t advocating anything you seem to think I was. Instead, I was sharing what I thought was an interesting, observed corrolation between a decrease in SERPs and the reintroduction of nofollow on Wikipedia for a site that had some of its best links coming from Wikipedia.
Yep, Wikipedia Back-links are gone. It’s sad, but I was arguing for it.
I hope that this will be a temporarily thing and that the search engines will start ignoring the nofollow attribute (and not Wikipedia removing it).
I stated the reasons for my opinion all over. See SEJ for example. I did multiple posts to that subject.
Heads up and I am sure you will manage!
Kris - Sites with little linkage but the wikipedia links are appearing in Google groups complaining about “going supplemental” which happens when you do not have enough pagerank BUT both Adam Lasnik and Matt Cutts claim Wikipedia was already devalued for not using the nofollow tag. In other words, they claim that Wikipedia had already lost it’s ability to pass pagerank anyhow.
I am not so sure.
No writing for a month. Blogging is pretty pants really? I thought this would be a good one to come back to. As with most blogs it is hard to find time when you are too bust making money. Oh well will stop bye in the future perhaps.
Very sorry about this, I was out of the country visiting my Dad and we were on the road nonstop with little or no internet access… I hope I haven’t lost ya
I was going to make a quick post letting people know I’d be away for a bit, but decided not to because I really want to try to have most of my posts contain something substantial/informative/interesting. Now that I’m checking up on so many blogs myself, I’ve learned how annoying it can be to go through a bunch of posts that don’t really say anything–so that’s what I’m trying to avoid.