nofollow in WIkipedia has absolutely no SEO perks?

as i stated somewhere else in this thread... I have noticed big results on the keyword I have anchored there. Of course it can disappear, and I'll let you know as soon as it happens.

What they claim nofollow does, and what it is actually doing... isn't consistent.

 

I agree with you, it's possible that kind of links could bring you some higher rankings, even with the nofollow

 

the nofollow tag doesn't mean the links are follow, it means it isn't counted when calculating SERPS.

 

Google confirmed recently that spiders don't even follow the links, let alone pass any PR. From an SEO perspective for Google they're useless.

 

I respectfully disagree. Just because Google says it, doesn't make it so.

I never said it passed PR. I don't care about PR because it has nothing to do with SERPS. It is FOOLISH to believe that a backlink with a nofollow being counted by Google has zero effect in respect to SERPS.

 

True, but I'll disbelieve it when I see otherwise. I've yet to see proof of a nofollow link that any effect on the SERPS. It's something I'm testing at the moment, but I've not seen anything to show otherwise.

 

why wouldn't I believe what Google says. I don't remember any instance of google lying to webmasters.

Your increased rankings can be because of a number of factors, not just the wiki link. heck it may not even be something you did, it could be the fact that your competition is not doing any seo

 

if google says so , it must be true for atleast googlebot

 

Not always, Google say what they want webmasters to do - doesn't always make it true. In this case though I'm inclined to believe them.

 

give me a couple examples of google lying to webmasters

 

That AdWords click fraud is less than 0.02% (yeah right!)

Denying indexing problems last year when it was patently obvious there were

are two that spring to mind. Remember Google are a company so they'll only give out information that they want to and won't hurt their shareholders. Believing them to be any different is crazy.

Like I said, on a technical issue like this I'm inclined to believe them.

 

I guess I should have not phrased it so harshly.

I didn't mean Google maliciously lies to Webmasters.

What I meant was that they make statements as an absolute. They claim "rel=nofollow does this, this, and this." Even though it's their software, algorithims, etc, do they truely know how every thing will be affected? I really don't think that's the case. Search has such a dynamic element to it, that it should be impossible for them to say "it will behave in this manner for every possible situation."

I feel when they say "rel=nofollow does this." they really are saying "we designed rel=nofollow to do this, but can't be certain it will hold true for every situation.

 

I'll agree with that.

 

Nofollow attribute tells a search engine spider: "Do not score this link" rather than "Do not follow this link."
Wikipedia links may have some value, but not for increasing the page rank.

 

Yahoo and MSN keep very old indexes, I saw yesterday a few links on Wikipedia to one of my sites, which incidentally expired more than a year ago.

Those backlinks are more likely the result of indexing prior the nofollow attribute was introduced.

 

I think this is the closest to the truth. I still pursue wiki links because the traffic converts well.

 

Which is what I have been saying all along

It won't pass pr, sure it can bring you traffic, but it does help in regards to serps.

 

1) A nofollow link can bring you traffic, but this discussion is about SEO perks, not traffic.
2) A nofollow link does not help in regard to SERPs, for the exact reason that it doesn't pass PR.

 

Speaking as someone who has a site linked to in Wikipedia for several months, I haven't seen a drop in rankings at all since they implemented the nofollow tag, and I haven't touched that site at all during this time.

I still think that you will get at least some credit for being linked to by Wikipedia, but it's now much more useful for the extra traffic you will receive than the search engine rankings.

 

You probably wouldn't see much of a drop from one site adding nofollow, unless it was your ONLY backlink.