02.17.07
Wikipedia is droping in most recent update
I wrote a few weeks ago that Google was devaluing Wikipedia in the SERPS. ( “Google and Wikipedia seem to be having a lovers spat”). At the time I could only see the results on some test data center that Google likes to serve me every so often. Well now I am actually seeing it on actual datacenters that I know the IP of. These datacenters seem to have an index update on them.
216.239.37.107
216.239.37.99
64.233.185.99
64.233.189.104
Some of the searches I see are:
christian missionaries (old) (new)
This could have something to do with Wikipedia putting the nofollow on all their links or could just be that some sites are just ranking better than Wikipedia. There are still a lot of terms that are exactly the same.
I guess I just keep hoping that Google will take away the authority status of such a stupid idea of a website. How can anybody link to Wikipedia when what you linked to could change at any time. Google should treat all links to Wikipedia as nofollow because you can’t trust the site.
As of this writing Wikipedia is down. It is probably wishful thinking to hope that it won’t come back up.
Technorati Tags: wikipedia, google, datacenter, google datacenter, google update, wikipedia is down


Gary Ruplinger said,
02.23.07 at 4:25 am
I doubt that Google is manually adjusting its rankings to penalize Wikipedia, however, I do think when Wikipedia went nofollow, they actually hurt their authority.
You’re probably well aware of why, but I’d like to point it out to your readers.
If we remember good ole Brinn and Page when they first developed the pagerank system, it was based off of how academic journals worked. An article could be judged on its importance based on how many others referred to it. However, a journal article that didn’t cite any resources on its own would be viewed with a suspicous eye. When applied to a website, that means outgoing links help rankings, not hurt.
I, for one, am glad to see Wikipedia getting penalized for going all nofollow. I know they had to deal with a lot of spam, but you’d think they could have come up with something better than their everything is nofollow solution.
Gerard said,
05.03.07 at 9:19 am
*?#@! WIkipedia. Its lame.
Algorithm Update At Google? | TheVanBlog said,
01.29.08 at 9:40 pm
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