Difference between revisions of "ProFollow"

Why NoFollow?

AboutUs is here to be a guide to the internet. Linking to bad actors (which is a consequence of linking to everyone) has two bad effects:

1. It makes search results less reliable because a highly regarded site (AboutUs.org) is linking to a poorly regarded site.
2. Since search engines are committed to providing good results, AboutUs.org as a whole can be penalized for linking to bad actors.

To avoid linking to bad actors, AboutUs has decided to turn on NoFollow for all external links, with certain exceptions. The plan is to continue to expand those exceptions as far as possible to reward the good actors on the internet, while continuing to withhold benefits from bad actors, or those not interested in building this public resource (e.g. AboutUs.org).

Why Follow?

To acknowledge

• good actors on the internet

who have

• added to this resource by creating a great page on AboutUs about their website.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of getting your web site to appear high up on the list when people do certain searches on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. It's one of the most fundamental ways of establishing a solid online presence.

Many of the people who work on AboutUs pages are here to promote their businesses, treating their AboutUs pages as a critical part of their SEO strategies. A good AboutUs page can attract individual readers to your site, but for SEO, it's actually more important to attract "web spiders" -- the automatic programs that companies like Google and Yahoo use to build their search indexes -- to your site.

Web pages often have an embedded code, known as the "nofollow tag," that is an instruction to web spiders; it tells them whether or not they are permitted to follow a certain link. Most (but not all) web spiders respect this instruction. If a "nofollow" tag is set, it tells the spider to ignore the link, so the location of the linked page (in this case, the actual web site corresponding to an AboutUs page) gets ignored.

AboutUs recently made the decision to have their pages, by default, set the "nofollow" tag, denying spiders the right to index web sites. But AboutUs is also turning it off, by request, for pages that people have put work into.

We haven't yet figured out how to make a request, or to whom, or what criteria that person will use to make a decision.

What does it mean

if links are NoFollow and how can I tell?

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.

Innviting the search engines to index and follow our AboutUs pages, as shown below, will substantially improve the quality of the relationship and the volume of traffic between the search engines and AboutUs.

Traffic is generally good for business NOT supressing traffic. Restraining traffic also restrains interactions and \generally has the opposite effect. As traffic and business interactions are supported and encouraged, even between countries, all of the various participants experience financial growth and increases in the quality of everyday life. Every pebble thrown into the lake generates innumerable ripples and consequences. I believe that removing any restrictons from indexing and following will send beneficiaL ripples further than we can now imagine.

Hugh Brecher

What's the opposite of that?

These are the two common versions as generally used in html headers:

and

Hugh Brecher

Currently

What's the current situation with links at AboutUs?

Currently, AboutUsFeatured and AboutUsSpotlighted articles are followed.

• Featured have gone through our original community process.
• Spotlighted go through our company process
• We need to develop a new community process

What's the AboutUs future plan?

1. The AboutUs DevTeam is developing a tool for sysops to turn NoFollow on and off.
2. This page (FollowNoFollowDiscussion) is being used to formulate a policy (including making further recommendations for Dev, if necessary).

Discussions to integrate

• PageRankRecommendations

Requests to turn off nofollow

Pending

• Alexander Zlatin asks in LiveChat for ChemicalAid.com TedErnst
• Michael VanDeMar requests Better-Mortgage-Rate.com no followed

Please turn off "nofollow" or just switch it to "follow" for each of the following pages, each of which is my work:

jewelry-casting.net

Thank you, Hugh Brecher

Hugh, please see below for the requests that have been granted. jewlrey-casting.net hasn't been worked on yet (it appears) and thus is still pending. TedErnst (talk)

• Anthony requests InstantCallBlast.com. (We are going to work together to make the page look a little better first.) Kristina (contact me) 14:22, 26 June 2008 (PDT)

granted

• Pete Forsyth asks in a weblog comment] for WikiProjectOregon.wordpress.com - 30 May 2008 -- Pete is in Portland, a known RealPerson, doing beneficial work. -- TedErnst
• Sam requests SeoCompanyService.com be featured (he worked on several pages before that were). -- Sam has been around AboutUs for a long time, adding to the project. -- TedErnst
• 4TulsaRealty.com, TheTulsaBricklayer.com, 4Trademark.com, LegalClosing.com, RelevantArticles.Org, TulsaJewelryByHenry.com, HughBrecher.com, RelevantArticles.Org -- Hugh has built out all these pages, plus has a client relationship with AboutUs -- TedErnst

Hugh has coined the term in the AboutUs Family - :-) ~~ MarkDilley

• Dereke requests HolisticPage.com.au via email last week. Page has now been edited and has some nice content so it's "approved". Kristina (contact me) Kristina (contact me) 18:54, 20 July 2008 (PDT)

Suggestions:

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.

Recently sparked by AboutUs.org + Nofollow = Wha...? --Michael VanDeMar