Wikipedia - Wikipedia is an online peer-reviewed free encyclopedia, a unique product of Internet
culture that grown to hold more than three million articles. Until recently, Wikipedia had few competitors, but
Google has now introduced the analogous Knol.
Wikipedia is huge and therefore cannot be ignored entirely by Search Engine Optimization. For many keywords it is
the undisplaceable top listing, but it can also be the source of Web search engine authority for good articles at
others sites that are linked from Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia was started in January 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. It is
operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. It is now the largest and fastest growing
online reference, and one of the world’s ten most visited websites. Wikipedia has branched out into dictionaries,
answers and other modules.
As of September 2008 the English Edition of Wikipedia had a massive 2.57 million content pages (articles) making it over 15 times the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
An article about the Summer Olympics was the top article in August 2008 and got about 4.4 million pageviews, while an
article about Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin got over 4 million pageviews according to the statistics given. You can view statistics here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
and especially here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
This page lists the most popular articles and pageviews:
http://stats.grok.se/en/top
Those apply just to the English language version.
Wikipedia is multilingual. It is available in 253 languages. Note that foreign language articles are not not
translations of English language Wikipedia articles and may be much more detailed and accurate for subjects of local
interest.
Wikipedia has more than 100 servers set up to deal with the 10,000 – 35,000 page requests every second. One little
appreciated feature of Wikipedia is the speed at which articles are updated. If a public figure wins an election or
dies, even a relatively minor official, their biography may be updated as soon as the news is out.
Wikipedia statistics can be a valuable SEO research tool. This site -
Wikipedia Page View Statistics gives the number of pageviews per month for any Wikipedia page.
For top ranked pages, this gives you an idea of what a #1 spot in Google for a particular keyword might bring in terms
of visitors.
Because it is open to all comers who may make contributions under assumed names, Wikipedia is vulnerable to ideologues,
spammers, trolls and vandals. An army of editors and a special robot keep tabs on the pages to try to ensure that they
have not been vandalized are not biased or inaccurate etc. There is a strict code of standards and a mechanism for
addressing point of view problems. However, the editorial community seems to have a certain characteristic bias
regarding political issues, and particular rogue editors can be allowed to run amok for quite a while despite protests
of users.
Wikipedia sets quality standards for its articles and editors mark articles that are poor quality by those
standards - don't site references or have skimpy information or poor English. Unavoidably, articles edited by many
contributors come to look like they are "made by a committee" and require periodic reorganization, and often different
articles about the same subject may contradict each other. This is more true of the less popular subjects which get less
editorial attention. Biased or rogue editors are also experts at using the system to protect the incorrect
information they entered and to keep out information and sources that are inconvenient for their opinions. An ordinary
user or visitor protesting against such an editor usually doesn't have enough expertise regarding the Wikipedia system
to outmaneuver the editor and prove bias.
Because of its size, Wikipedia has a great deal of Authority. Wikipedia articles about informational content often rank number 1 in search engine results, and links from those article to other Web pages tend to give those other pages a great deal of added visibility.
This gives you a legitimate opportunity to help yourself and to help Wikipedia by contributing content based on your own
Web site and linking to your site as a reference. The importance of such links is frequently exploited by spammers and
people who run hate sites, to append external references to the sites they favor. These may stay in place for years
until someone notices them and removes them. Spammers may then return the same links. Wikipedia has started to use the
rel = "nofollow" tag in external links, which prevents the
Google search engine from crediting the link to the
target site. This eliminates spam, but it also unfairly perpetuates the supremacy of wikipedia by denying authority to
legitimate websites.
A complication is introduced by scraping sites. These sites copy all the content of Wikipedia at a given time and
reproduce it separately. Wikipedia allows such use because of its generous copyright policy - "copyleft" - which means
you can copy anything as long as you credit Wikipedia. Google and perhaps other search engines have "learned" to
recognize such sites as "Webspam" and generally downgrade their ranking. However, the pages, with spam links, may remain
on the Web for years. The scraped pages are generally not updated with Wikipedia is updates.
Wikipedia uses MediaWiki as its software platform, MediaWiki is free open source software built on a MySQl database.
Ami Isseroff
September 30, 2008
Note - Definitions of Search Engine
Optimization terms are based on inferences from common usage and definitions given by other sources. Conclusions about
search engine behavior are based on understanding of the behavior of the most popular search engines. Both are subject
to error or may change. Search engine company management may define or use a term or set or change any policy in any way
they see fit, and may make these definitions and specifications public or not. These decisions and definitions are
beyond our control. Notice: Copyright
All materials are copyright 2008, 2009 by Ami Isseroff. All rights reserved. These pages may not be reproduced in any
form in electronic or printed media without express written permission from the author.
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