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Enable `nofollow` attribute for tool links
Open, LowPublicBUG REPORT

Description

The tool links within the left-side "vector-menu," particularly the "What links here" and the "Related Changes", should have rel=nofollow attribute. Since by default talk pages have "noindex" tag, the "Talk page" link should have rel=nofollow attribute as well.

While inspecting the search console, I observed a significant number of pending crawling pages that start with "Special:". For each actual page, we have those two distinct special pages. Notably, each special page has a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag, rendering the act of crawling them an inefficient utilization of time, bandwidth, and search engine resources. I recommend implementing the nofollow tag at the skin level.

Event Timeline

@Fuzzy: is Product-Analytics tagged for visibility/awareness of this work?

I think "related changes" already has nofollow. The rest still don't and would require either a core patch or an extension patch (e.g. Extension:CiteThisPage).