Wikipedia:Nofollow (archive)

Please explain at the top of this page what "nofollow" means. This basic information is not explained anywhere in this page. Badagnani 22:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * "nofollow" is a relation tag (rel="nofollow") which can be added to any link and is technically a request from the website to search engines to ignore the link. That's the technical meaning. What having such a tag means about your site etc. is subjective and various opinions are given below. --BozMo talk 23:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * See also Meta Nofollow and Spam in blogs.

In response to widespread abuse of Google's PageRank formula using link spam, Google has implemented a special tag system which — for sites that automatically implement it — makes all links be counted nominally, rather than be ranked by excess propagation and proportion. This operates by changing the normal tags with a "nofollow" marker (  ). Google note

This new nofollow tag has some hidden features which are more good than bad. Webmasters, those who run a website based on content (bloggers arn't webmasters plain and simple, dont misuse webmaster), can profit from using this nofollow in strengthening their own page rank. According to notes released in the beta of page rank, (source) PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn)). In this algorithm, one way links help more than Reciprocal_link. using nofollow then creats a one way link, giving your page rank an extra boost.

The possible implementation of this feature on Wikipedia was discussed at Stopping Link Spam / Comment Spam and Reduce link spamming: Support Google's "nofollow" approach. During the latter discussion, it was revealed that automatic addition of "rel=nofollow" to all external links had already been added to the Mediawiki software and enabled in Wikimedia projects. Another discussion ensued at Nofollow. From this informal poll, it appears that the majority of users desire control over the use of the feature.

According to Brion in #mediawiki, the development IRC channel, the use of "rel=nofollow" in links can now be controlled by setting "$wgNoFollowLinks = false;" in a Wiki's settings. In light of this, it is proposed that the use of nofollow be disabled for the English Wikipedia.


 * As of March 6, 2005, use of rel="nofollow" is suspended for the time being on en.wikipedia.org. The vote is far from a consensus and discussion shows strong opposing positions with very wide differences in priorities which have not yet been resolved. More advanced heuristic use of rel="nofollow" is likely to come, when someone has the time to put in the effort to make it work. The blanket rel="nofollow" remains in effect on all other wikis for now.


 * As of May 22, 2006, following this discussion, rel="nofollow" is now enabled on non-article pages (i.e. pages outside the main namespace) on the English Wikipedia, but remains disabled for links in articles. Brion has said that it is his "intention to enable nofollow everywhere in the long run (though this might end up being in more limited form, for instance allowing some whitelisting or other verification process)."


 * As of January 20, 2007, Brion has re-enabled no-follow for the article namespace in the English Wikipedia, at the request of Jimbo Wales.


 * Doing this despite 61% votes against it seems like a totalitarian decision to me :( --Kyknos 10:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Position in favor of disabling nofollow
According to the developers themselves, the main reason for the use of the attribute is to prevent linkspam on low-traffic Wikis. Since this is the most active Wikimedia project, this is not a problem. Linkspam is, in most cases, quickly removed. Boosting the rankings of good resources is a positive thing, and encourages other sites to reciprocate in linking. A blacklist exists for persistent spam. Also, it is unlikely that, on an active Wiki such as this one, the use of the attribute will deter spammers; most will be unaware of it.

Some of the above statements are disputed
It is disputed that linkspam can be quickly removed, that anon IPs blocks are effective, or that spam blacklists are effective in the face of a sophisticated bot attack. See Wikipedia talk:Nofollow for details. And it is disputed that the author of a bot that shows this sophistication (switching to new IPs and new URLs with each attack) would be undeterred by "nofollow" if he had been aware that we had implemented it only a couple of weeks earlier.

Google certainly believes that "nofollow" will deter spam and recommends using it anywhere that users can add links by themselves: "securing every location where someone can add a link is the way to keep spammers at bay". Also Yahoo and MSN Search will be supporting "nofollow", so if it isn't standard yet it very soon will be. 

Implementation of the vote
I have notified the developers on the MediaWiki mailing list as to result of the vote. It's now in their hands to take action regarding it. Given that I have encountered two different interpretations of the vote. One interpretation is that there was "no consensus", and therefore the status quo should rule ("keep" won the vote). The other is that that the majority should rule in this case. Personally I voted under the impression that since this was a brand new policy, implemented only one month ago in the software, and that it is a boolean flag in the code that affects nothing else (as to my understanding), that the majority should rule here. In other words, it was my understanding that it was to be a straight up or down vote on whether or not to keep the flag on or not. If anything, it should have required a consensus to turn on in the first place. As you can see, I voted "remove" but I certainly want policy in this case for a new feature to be decided on an up-or-down vote in any case, (or for the original status quo to be given precedence) no matter how I felt. I know that "keep" voters will probably see this different, but I have a hard time understanding how a policy that was implemented without user input, and which is supported by a minority of users, should remain as policy. It would be quite different if "nofollow" had been the status quo all along, and we were voting to remove it. This was not the case here. Like I said, I know others may not agree with me, but at this point it becomes a matter of how should policy be decided in this case. -- Decumanus 20:57, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)


 * There was no consensus. We don't do what you call "straight up or down" voting on Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:17, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * But the status quo of one month ago was having no attribute. It was added without user input, and now this action has been endorsed only by a small minority. If anything, I believe it should have taken a consensus to implement in the first place. -- Decumanus 21:21, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
 * I agree. Despite being an issue of contention, it was implemented without community consent or warning. Perhaps the person making the change didn't anticipate this disagreement, but until an effective compromise is deployed we should return to the real status quo, just as we would revert a controversial change to a policy page that lacks consent. If this is itself an issue of contention, perhaps we should vote on what the response to this vote will be. Deco 06:25, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * as this was the first vote on the issue, we can assume that most people would have voted the way they did if it had been a vote to introduce it. These results in that case would have been interpreted as a clear NO CONSENSUS to turn it on, So the wishes of the community pinke prevail and the feature turned off. Thryduulf 08:59, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)