Short version: Increased site credibility, potential referral traffic, higher trust from search engines, and more chances for organic links from other sites.
Long version: All Wikipedia external links have been set to
nofollow since 2007 to prevent spam and maintain editorial quality; however, they are among the most valuable nofollow links for SEO and trust-building purposes.
Search engines are instructed not to pass PageRank or direct "link juice" through these links. Technically, the HTML code for Wikipedia external links includes the rel="nofollow" attribute, which is recognized by all major search engines.
Key Technical Details:
- Nofollow since January 2007
- HTML attribute: <a href="URL" rel="nofollow">.
- Direct SEO impact: No direct PageRank transfer.
- Indirect SEO value: High. Wikipedia is the second-highest site globally by organic search traffic, and its pages attract millions of monthly visitors.
- Referral traffic: Wikipedia links can generate steady, high-quality referral traffic due to the platform’s authority and visibility
- Tier-two backlinks: Pages on Wikipedia often accumulate thousands of backlinks from other authoritative sites. For example, the Wikipedia article on ChatGPT has over 13,000 backlinks from external domains. If your link is on such a page, it can benefit from this secondary link equity.
- Median lifespan of external URLs: About 1 year, due to link rot and content changes