Wikipedia to use “nofollow” tag

 So those who have used Wikipedia in the past to build links will be dissapointed to learn that they will now us using the “nofollow” tag on outbound links.  To quote the people over at Wikipedia: 

“At Jimbo Wales’ directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded “nofollow” — this should help cut spamming immensely once word gets out in the SEO community.”

Wikipedia was one of the sites where you could get a high quality inbound link by contributing good content. I’ve used it to build links before (legitimately). However, I think we’ve all seen people abuse the system which is why Wikipedia is making the move to the “nofolllow” tag.  Bottom line is that those outbound links will no longer pass any “link juice” to the sites they’re linking to. Of course, certain pages of Wikipedia are so heavily trafficked  that it’s still worth it to get a link just for the traffic alone. Seems to me that Wikipedia is getting stronger all the time. In many occasions, there is no way they should be ranked as high as they are (for example “search engine optimization” shows Wikipedia ranked # 1 on Google??? C’mon).  With this move, their site will get even more powerful as their PR will all be passed internally.

The move to nofollow will not eliminate link spam. Has it really reduced the amount of link spam you see on your blogs? No. Not really.  We all have to deal with link spam every single day. It will reduce it some but absolutely it will not solve the problem. Is it the right move? Yes. If I were running Wikipedia I’d have done the same. You get the benefit of reduced spam while also making your site more powerful.  The people most pissed off are probably the link spammers. At least Matt Cutts will be happy.