John Lee wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Related question: was the nofollow change for all links with search
engines
permanent?
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone writes code to that effect.
(whenever this is pointed out to those objecting, there usually follows silence and the occasional tumbleweed - it seems complaining is easier than programming.)
It's crazily difficult to program this thing. Those who advocate, say, not nofollow-ing links older than X amount of time, probably don't realise how immensely difficult this would be. You would have to first isolate all external links (no easy task, but fortunately I think we have one standard format for external links), and then go back through all the revisions in the history up to a certain point, and make sure each revision contained this link (not as easy as it sounds). As a programmer, I would not want to take this task on.
Johnleemk
On the off chance that someone interested and capable is reading this thread, I think a more efficient method would involve setting up a database table to track each external link for each page, tracking the date/time that the link was added. Each entry would be verified on page save; if a link disappears, it's removed from the table; if a new link appears, it's added to the table.
When a page is rendered, one lookup for each external link would reveal its age. Much more efficient.
Me? I'm probably not capable, and definitely not interested. I'm fine with nofollow on external links.
-Rich