I have been wondering this for a while so i thought i woudl get it out on a forum to see if i'm thinking correctly. Its common knowledge from what i know that the most important factor in search engine ranking is inbound links. Most people start out with reciprocal link exchanges. Although pretty much useless you have to start somewhere. My thinking is, if you were to add the meta robot NOFOLLOW and NOINDEX to your links page, wouldn't that make the links from all of your 'reciprocal links partners' appear to the search engines as one way inbound links? Additionally simply not linking to your links page from anywhere on your site, wouldn't that do the same thing. Set me straight here guys.
OKay. For one thing, if you added "noindex" on a link exchange without telling the person you exchanged links with that you were going to do that, you would gain a pretty negative reputation, pretty quickly. Second, "nofollow" means the link does not pass pagerank. It does not mean it is not used at all to work out rankings. But, hey, if you can work out the secret sauce (for ranking) I wish you luck. Hope that is helpful.
I apologize. I'm sure that this issue had probably been beaten to death... But I am curious about Wikipedia backlinks since they've become nofollow. Would it really make sense that Google would NOT somehow recognize that? I mean, from Google's perspective. Oh sure, Wikipedia adds the "nofollow" tag to deal with their own internal spammer issues. But would Google or other search engines be smart to ignore Wikipedia links? Hey, I'm only a noob. But I still wonder...
I think you will find Google has put a lot of time and effort into Wikipedia, they LOVE it. But, to answer your question, there is no doubt that links from Wikipedia can have an impact on rankings. But, if you think you can create a page, spam it with links, and expect that to make any difference to your ranking, I think you are kidding yourself. If however, you are sited on a 8 year old entry as an authority author, and gain a link as a result. I think you will see some movement in your serps.
My situation is probably a little different... because I have written a ton of books--like something over 150 titles?--I am listed as an author. I then (not knowing the rules) added links to my sites, including my official site and a couple I set up for small business info.. A donnybrook ensued, where more knowledgeable Wikipedia editors said I shouldn't have added the links to my sites... Finally, a senior Wikipedia editorial type said, hey, he shouldn't have edited his own entry... but the links to his official site and the two sites he actively edits should be included. All those links are now "nofollow" links. But they're still listed as links if you use the link command to see which links Google knows about
I would be careful use the “no follow†on your site. I know bloggers that implemented the “no follow†on comments and when the commenter caught wind of it the visitor rate fell by 80%. He has since removed the “no follow†tag and is trying to rebuild his traffic. The no follow tag killed him.
Well you can use these tags but if you do a link exchange without mentioning this to your partners you will make enemies pretty quickly, when I do exchanges I always go back to check for such things.