Editor’s note: Since defaulting to NoFollow, AboutUs.org has implemented its ProFollow policy, which offers to change the outbound links to DoFollow on good AboutUs pages for good sites.
Some of you may have noticed that we turned on no follow on our site. Don’t panic!
Not a lot of people have mentioned this, and fewer still have objected, but nevertheless, we should have announced it before we did it and articulated our policy slightly before we enacted it instead of slightly after we did.
For a site as open, as large and with such good search engine juice, AboutUs.org loves to give more credibility and link juice to constructive web publishers rather than bad actors on the web, despite our belief in the essential goodness of all. What we wish, most of all, is to reward the builders of AboutUs.org who have worked over the last year and a half to make this site the locus of good work and the beginnings of a fantastic community. That is exactly why we are modifying our system to reflect the commitment and sincerity the AboutUs community has shown in creating a valuable resource.
As a smarter system of giving leverage to legit contributors, we have placed the no follow tag on our articles as a start. Our next step will be to reward all the good actors by removing the no follow. So if you’ve got a domain page on AboutUs.org, edit it and tell your story. We are sure to pro-follow those. It’s that simple.
We have some ideas that we are excited about and we think you may have some ideas on how to make this fair and sensible, please do share your ideas.
Hopefully this makes sense to you, and we’ve succeeded in communicating how much we want the AboutUs.org community to thrive and endure and for your experience here to be positive.
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas leave them below and we’ll respond.
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This does sound like a good policy, though obviously the judgment and turnaround time associated with removing the “nofollow” tags will be critical.
If I could suggest, I think lots of people are interested in SEO without being technically-minded enough to know what “nofollow” means. (Even I, a pretty savve webster, thought of Twitter when I first saw the post’s title!)
It would be great if you could write this policy up somewhere, introducing the topic in more layman-friendly terms. This post is great in responding to the apparent complaints you got, but would be a bit confusing to someone unaware of your past policy.
Great idea, Pete. I’ll get something started. http://aboutus.org/FollowNoFollowDiscussion perhaps?
OK, so with a little prompting from Ted, I wrote out a draft of that page. I have two questions:
(1) What’s the easiest way to determine whether nofollow is on or off for a certain page?
(2) How does one go about requesting that it be turned off? I’d like to have it turned off (if it’s on) for wikiprojectoregon.wordpress.com.
Thanks!
1. I don’t know.
2. I also don’t know, but I’ve added your request to the http://aboutus.org/FollowNoFollowDiscussion page and I will work on finding out the answer.
Thanks, Ted. With a claim that “We are sure to pro-follow those. It’s that simple,” I’d consider it pretty important that you outline a process somewhere. Having taken the time to educate myself on your process, I’d like to think I’m in a good position to avail myself of this option on my own behalf, or as a favor to others…but until you guys can outline a process that leads to an actual lifting of the “nofollow” tag, I’m not.
In regards to (1) above, a simple way to determine whether or not links are being followed on a page is to right-click on the page and select “View Page Source.” In that window do a search (Ctrl + F) for rel=”nofollow” and look at the web address next to it. If you don’t find any results for your search, then none of the links on the page have a nofollow attributed to them.
Hello.
I would be interested in getting nofollow turned off for the better-mortgage-rate.com page… but I would also understand if you want to implement a process before doing so.
What if you were to reward editors who specifically found and added content to a certain number of websites that don’t already exist in the wiki? Say, perhaps, at least 3? That, in conjunction with minimum time that you must be a member before getting your links followed, would both cut down on fly by night editors, only interested in adding their own content, as well as encourage people to find new sites to add.
I know that for myself, and I would guess for most people who are comfortable writing content, doing reviews on 3 sites that are not competing with mine would not be burdensome in the least.
I completely agree with Michael. I understand the reasons for applying no-follows but I think a process for removing them needs to be set. The benefits of posting content swings heavily toward AboutUs and away from members when their work is deemed untrustworthy.
Please join us for the unfolding discussion: http://www.aboutus.org/FollowNoFollowDiscussion
This could be detrimental to the over all page rank of AboutUs.org pages!
This is because one of the factors that Google looks at is the number of external links and how many of those links go to high ranking pages / websites…
Altho this “nofollow” edit is more than likely going to remove far more low ranking links… it could also decrease the amount of high ranking links (like the BBC.co.uk)!!
Hi Michael, we still need to clarify what our ProFollow stance is. I hear you that we could be hurting ourselves, but at the time we made this decision, we thought that pointing to all the bad actors was a bigger priority and we could start pointing to the good content on the net, from good content pages from AboutUs.org Look forward to your help with clarifying all this, looks like you have some experience with it. Best, MarkDilley
i just joined the wiki community i suggest you should feature a FAQS LIST for new members
We actually do have a FAQ section, but we call the main link to get there “Need Help?” so it isn’t obvious. You can find it at http://www.AboutUs.org/Help
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