Last week, Wikipedia changed their external links to all use the microformat “nofollow” so that all outbound links carry no search engine optimization weight. This would appear to be a good move by Wikipedia in order to combat link spamming.
Inbound links to a website are a significant factor in determining the website’s page rank and consequently it’s ranking in search engine results. The page rank of the site on which the link is placed is the main factor in how much the link affects your website’s page rank.
Links from highly ranked sites are considered a strong endorsement of your own website’s quality by the big search engines.
With a Google page rank of 8/10, Wikipedia has long been a target of SEO efforts in building inbound links for sites. This has led to an ongoing war of page edits between those who wish to build as many inbound links as possible and those who wish to keep Wikipedia relevant and authoritative.
Despite this being a loss to us as far as our SEO toolkit goes, I believe it’s the right decision by Wikipedia in order to protect itself.
