Effect of Wikipedia Links to Rankings

Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

[HRoth]

I wasn't sure where to ask this. I searched but didn't see any definite info one way or the other about whether links from Wikipedia have a good, bad, or indifferent effect on ranking. I ask because four of my top ten links are from Wikipedia pages. These point to pages where I do sell a product but where I have a lot of information about it, and that's why someone put the link. Other than bringing visitors, does this affect ranking for those pages? Does it affect the ranking of the site as a whole?

[tedster]

Wikipedia now uses the rel="nofollow" attribute on external links, so there's no direct link juice flowing to you. That said, so many people read Wikipedia that it can have a strong secondary effect of helping you to acquire links from other sites who discovered you first on aWkikpeida link.

[HRoth]

Okay, thanks.

[potentialgeek]

Yeah, junk sites that expect to get link juice from linking to bigger (legit) sites, lift the links from first directories they find, which are often Wiki's external footer links.

p/g

[BillyS]

The biggest benefit is the secondary traffic coming from Wiki itself.

[nuevojefe]

Do a controlled test. There's always the possibility that a link, even if nofollowed, could appease another part of the algorithm besides pagerank (trustrank for example). That and to see how it affects rankings for other engines.

[Johan007]

I presume nofollow carries no weight on any algorithm in Google otherwise the attribute will have no credibility.

[HRoth]

"Yeah, junk sites that expect to get link juice from linking to bigger (legit) sites, lift the links from first directories they find, which are often Wiki's external footer links."

I don't understand the second part of the sentence.

I do very much appreciate the traffic. I was just worried that in some way Google might take away ranking from a business mentioned in Wikipedia, thinking that it must be spamming.

[devil_dog]

I do very much appreciate the traffic. I was just worried that in some way Google might take away ranking from a business mentioned in Wikipedia, thinking that it must be spamming.

I dont think so... AFAIK thats wikipedia's lookout. in my opinion googlebot doesnt care weather a user put your link... or a spambot... or wikipedia themselves...

Anything on my site.. spam or not.. is my sole responsibility. similarly if i spam this forum with my own link, google wont penalize me in fact it would only boost my rankings... now if my site is spamy then webmasterworld will loose some of its credibility in google's eyes...