Wikipedia Hits Back At The Spammers

In a surprise move, online resource site Wikipedia recently announced that all outgoing links from the site have been tagged as “nofollow” - which effectively renders them of no value when being considered by search engines. While the move has angered many, Wikipedia have seen a massive increase in spam links which offer little or no benefit to the massive online community which the site has fostered.Is The Move Justified?

While it is easy to see why Wikipedia have carried out the exercise (which is just temporary until they find a more efficient way to identify spam), there are millions of valid outgoing links on the site which will suffer. This move has also had a major impact on the Page Rank of many sites, thereby having a knock-on effect to both advertising and traditional business income for the sites in question.

Wikipedia itself relies on the contributions of third parties to add content, self-regulate and improve the quality of the offering. If the link situation is not resolved in the short term there is a real risk of contributors losing interest, and this may leave the market open for a competitor.

The webmaster forums and chat rooms are buzzing with claims and counter-claims with regards to the Wikipedia situation, but it does seem as though many are missing the real point. Spam is more than annoying, it is starting to have a real impact on people’s online livelihoods and income.

Will this spur the many millions of internet users to take a more hardline approach on reporting spam? Time will tell, but the internet is definitely approaching a crucial stage of the fight against spam, but who will be the long term winner?