What reminded me of this was a thread on another forum discussing a pretty dangerous brand of pseudoscience and the way that the discussion was framed it really wasn't possible to take a position without posting links to some sites which promote some pretty dangerous stuff. And, at this point, there are easily over 100 links to crazy sites that spout a bunch of nonsense that isn't true.
I think that most people are aware that the position of a given webpage in the hierarchy of a Google search is determined by how many other pages link to that site. Needless to say a given page's PageRank from Google can make or break that site which is why it is important to use the rel="nofollow" tag for any links to websites that you don't want to come up first in queue when someone else does a Google search on that topic. Try and remember that when you post a link to something it is like casting a vote for that site.
It is all very well and good to share some laughs with your friends by linking to pages on Answers in Genesis showing drawings of dinosaurs with saddles on them but a middle school student shouldn't have to wade through all of that garbage in order to find a post from which they can plagiarize their homework.
It is fairly easy to get around this, there is a tag rel="nofollow" that you place after the second " and before the closing > and it magically creates a link that Google will not consider for the purposes of determining PageRank. It only takes an extra second.
When you post an URL it should look similar to this:
<a href="some_crackpot_sites_url.woo" rel="nofollow">YOUR : INSULTING, MEAN SPIRITED AND OVER THE TOP DESCRIPTION OF SAID CRACKPOT'S STUPID WEBPAGE</a>
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1 comments:
You realize that everyone is going to think that something they said in their blog inspired this post, yes?
My first thought was: It's because I like to eat my kids with bacon, isn't it?
;)
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