Well, the huge decision to be made by Wikipedia whether or not they would re-introduce the rel=”nofollow” attribute to external links has been made: sure enough, “nofollow” is back!

What this means is that in terms of most of the leading search engines (Google and MSN mainly) no longer give weight to the external links on any of the Wikipedia site in terms of ranking. (It has been pointed out to me by Andy Beard that Yahoo does in fact use ‘nofollow’ tags - thanks Andy!)

In my opinion, this is good news, as it will quickly stop black-hat SEO players from abusing the wiki in order to gain a higher rank in Google or PageRank. On the other hand, it seems a shame that deserving sites are not gaining some of the status they arguably deserve.

What is the overall opinion? Good Wikipedia, or bad Wikipedia?

Well, there’s been a recent PageRank update (which may still be taking place). The strange thing about this update, though, is that several pretty large websites (for example, AOL.com, Digg.com, 9rules.com, and unlimitedgamer.net), have lost all their PageRank for no apparent reason. I noticed that some of these sites were advertising Text-Link-Ads.com, but I have seen other now PR0 websites and weblogs which have nothing to do with T-L-A.com.

Why might the PR have dropped?

It seems strange that such bigs sites have lost their entire PR for no reason. Another thing is that the ranking and indexing of these sites seems to have remained relatively similar to prior to the update. It could be that these sites are linking out to bad neighbourhoods, but that doesn’t really weigh up if you look at what they are linking to.

Is PR now defunct? At least partially? Perhaps. Comments would be helpful!

OK, this is for all those people I keep telling about TITLE tags.

For search engines, it is important for categorisation, and for their understanding of the context of your page, for your to select an appropriate TITLE tag. It is one of the most important things you can do to help your content-rich site get recognised by Google and Yahoo, and the other engines. Please, please, please do not underestimate the importance, or it may well see your site rank far lower than it would be if it were well titled.

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I have noticed that over these past few days, the Google dance has been in full swing. There have been notable changes to both the Google Directory and backlinks have been updated.

I was very pleased as the ffnet.org backlinks went from 245 to 817, which I believe to be very good indeed, considering my sites youth.

However, the main subject of this post is about the bizarre Google directory update that has (is?) taken (taking?) place. I went on the Google directory yesterday to see if it had been updated, having read from someone one SEOChat that it had. I immediately noticed that the PageRank detail offered on the Google Directory was indeed changed. I also noticed, however, that my site (which was included in DMOZ) was not in the revised Directory.

This troubled me somewhat, but I also noticed other recently accepted ODP sites were not included. I thought very little more of it, putting it down to some kind of roll-back. Today, though, I looked at my SERPs and discovered that my sites description was that given by DMOZ. My site also shows up in a search for the domain name on Google Directory. Entirely bizarre!

Anyone have any thoughts / theories?