[wp-hackers] WordPress Leaks PageRank?

[Roy Schestowitz]

A certain issue that rarely gets discussed in this mailing list is SEO
characteristics of WordPress. I am aware that Matt read a book on the topic
some time in the past, but I have critically been looking at possible flaws. I
have asked in the SEO newsgroup about it and even searched the Internet, but
no-one seems to return a definite answer.

You probably know that all objects in your Webspace get treated equally, even if
they are XML-formatted files. Each such object gets assigned ranks/merit by the
search engines. This possibly includes your RSS feed, as well as RSS by
category, RSS for search queries and so forth. If you provide feeds for
individual entries (as many do), the number of feeds is proportional to the
number of published items.

I have just checked some of the notable sites which run atop WordPress 1.5 and
might be called "model sites". In all circumstances I see that RSS feeds for
individual entries are permitted to absorb energy (e.g. Google PageRank). Would
it not be sensible to rel="nofollow" such objects? These 'pages' get indexed and
dilute ranks. I noticed the same issue cropping up when implementing a lighter
page layout and PDF equivalents so I nofollow'ed them. There was no penalty as
a result. Would it not be sensible to hard-code rel="nofollow" in more places
in out-of-the-box WordPress? Certain items that may be valuable to users simply
add clutter to the search engines. If SEO is beyond the scope of this list, I
would understand and apologise in advance.

Thanks for any advice you may have,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com