So much for my intended entry
I had an entry I'd been poking at for about 8 or 9 days now about wikipedia changing a VERY important and mostly invisible portion of it's procedures, but I updated SeMagic (the program I use to write my livejournal posts) in the meantime, and apparently it's default draft-saving settings over-wrote my entry while I was writing my last two. The problem has now been fixed *twitch* and will not *tick* trouble me again.
That being said, the jist of the entry revolves around wikipedia giving spammers the finger when it comes to search rankings.
You see, if someone else's website has a link to your website on it, your website gets a higher search engine ranking. The more links from unique pages, the higher you rank with google or alexa (powers MSN search and others). This means that people do everything they can to get links up to their sites from other people's web pages. If you use a message board or a myspace, putting a link to your site on there gives you one extra unique link. See where the spammers get the idea?
Now imagine that people are making up wikipedia entries for completely non-existant or nearly-untraceable subjects that noone will EVER search wikipedia for and putting a link to their own website on that wikipedia page. Each one counts as an "external link" the same way that putting a link to your website in your forum signature does.
So wikipedia decided to tell everyone using them for advertisement to get a life. With one code change (setting all links to nofollow on a site-wide scale) they insured that when the search engine robots go through their site, noone's links get credit, and therefore, ranking.
Good for them, really. They kept with the spirit of what they're about. Encyclopedias shouldn't have advertisements in them, even invisible ones, as far as I'm concerned.
In other news: e-Bay ignores illegal activity cause it raises their stock price. *gasp*
Shill bidding on e-Bay has been going on since long before the 2006 act was passed, but it's interesting to note that the online side of the auction world is catching up with it's second estate counterpart in smaller and seedier ways.
And that's the geek news.
For those of you who've just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has recently been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven.
That being said, the jist of the entry revolves around wikipedia giving spammers the finger when it comes to search rankings.
You see, if someone else's website has a link to your website on it, your website gets a higher search engine ranking. The more links from unique pages, the higher you rank with google or alexa (powers MSN search and others). This means that people do everything they can to get links up to their sites from other people's web pages. If you use a message board or a myspace, putting a link to your site on there gives you one extra unique link. See where the spammers get the idea?
Now imagine that people are making up wikipedia entries for completely non-existant or nearly-untraceable subjects that noone will EVER search wikipedia for and putting a link to their own website on that wikipedia page. Each one counts as an "external link" the same way that putting a link to your website in your forum signature does.
So wikipedia decided to tell everyone using them for advertisement to get a life. With one code change (setting all links to nofollow on a site-wide scale) they insured that when the search engine robots go through their site, noone's links get credit, and therefore, ranking.
Good for them, really. They kept with the spirit of what they're about. Encyclopedias shouldn't have advertisements in them, even invisible ones, as far as I'm concerned.
In other news: e-Bay ignores illegal activity cause it raises their stock price. *gasp*
Shill bidding on e-Bay has been going on since long before the 2006 act was passed, but it's interesting to note that the online side of the auction world is catching up with it's second estate counterpart in smaller and seedier ways.
And that's the geek news.
For those of you who've just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has recently been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven.