Wikipedia gets tough on spammers

Outside links will no longer be indexed by search engines

The reference website Wikipedia has opened another front on the war with spammers who want to use it to sell products.

The site has banned search engines from following links from Wikipedia to external sites. Previously, it was possible for spammers to create pages on the encyclopaedia with links to their products. Because of the way most search engines work, the fact that the link came from Wikipedia would give it an added authority, and push it up the search engine's ranking.

From now on, all pages on the site will have a special tag added to their links which will instruct search engines that the links are not to be followed. The fact that anyone can create and edit pages on the site has made it an attractive target for spammers.

In a separate move, the encyclopedia has criticised Microsoft for hiring a blogger to edit pages critical of the giant software company. Microsoft objected to pages describing its file formats, and offered to pay one blogger to edit the pages to project a more favourable image.