39 replies to this topic

[Caroline]

I would like to come back on a known subject. More and more of my searches bring Wikipedia pages on top results. Can someone help me understand the technical reasons of this phenomenon? I can figure out quite some reasons such as:
- the Wikipedia domain is very popular, it is therfore normal its' pages get good positions;
- the pages are full-text : they are easier to read for a search engine;
- the contents of each page are specific : on one single page you will not find different subjects;
- a lot of internal links on meaningful keywords exist that help increase a page's popularity;
- a lot of external links exist to specific pages;
- ...

Are my reasons right ? would you know of any other possible reason ?

SE filters ?

thanks for thinking out loud with me. Caroline

[Jill]

Your reasons are pretty much it. It's a trusted domain with bazillions of links and useful information, that also isn't selling anything.

[jehochman]

Ordinary web users like Wikipedia, so the search engines give the people what they want. Keep in mind that SEOs aren't ordinary web users.

[dragonlady7]

As a blogger and commenter, whenever I'm referring to a topic I think my readers might want more 'factual'-style info on-- particularly in the realms of technical things, historical things, and weird cultural phenomena-- I'll do a quick search and pick out the Wikipedia article, and link to that. Wikipedia is very popular among bloggers etc. because even if it's not accurate, it's usually a good summary of the issues (and, often, misconceptions) surrounding a particular subject, and a good source of links to further debate if not more accurate information.

So I imagine Wikipedia's link popularity is immense. I know I am typical among my peer group-- I picked up the Wikipedia-linking habit from my friends.

Link pop on top of the issues outlined above should be enough to make the site in general rank pretty well, and many of its individual pages must rank very well.

[adybee]

Your reasons are pretty much it. It's a trusted domain with bazillions of links and useful information, that also isn't selling anything.

just wondered how do the large business directories fit into this category - does G see these as selling advertising? Technically are they serving information or advertising?

[Caroline]

Ordinary web users like Wikipedia, so the search engines give the people what they want. Keep in mind that SEOs aren't ordinary web users.

Ok but there must be key words and expressions that make sense for both what you call ordinary web users and SEOs...

[tamar]

I believe the main thought process behind its incredibly high rankings is that people trust it (the results are relevant) and there's a ton of link love going to Wikipedia pages.

[Michael Martinez]

Matt Cutts indicated at SMX Advanced 2007 that Google feels Wikipedia is a useful resource to people who don't know any better whether its content is accurate. The way he explained that point of view, it sounded like Google has tacitly admitted to giving some favorable weighting to Wikipedia, but though I have said as much in recent weeks I don't want to put words into Matt's mouth.

Other people, hearing his same comment, may not have come away with that impression.

Of course, many SEOs have been saying for about a year that Google is giving Wikipedia favorable weighting (in addition to its high number of inbound links, natural on-page keyword focus, internal linkage, etc.). In recent weeks, I have noticed a surge of Wikipedia articles moving in to the top 5 positions for many keywords where those article were not previously in the top ten results (but the articles did exist). Someone recently published a pretty good informal study (with a couple of minor flaws) that indicates a seriously favorable weighting for Wikipedia articles in Google's search results.

You can outrank Wiki articles but you have to really nail it for relevance to do so.

[dragonlady7]

Speaking strictly as a user and not as an SEO in this instance, I would say that maybe the best hope is for Wikipedia to link to you as a reference from their article on your topic. But I don't want to advocate that you go sign up for edit priveleges at Wikipedia just so you can add yourself to the article-- that's a good way to get them mad at you.

But it seems to me that if you're informative enough to get more link pop and thus outrank a wikipedia article, you'd be the best source of knowledge for that article and they'd be stupid not to link for you. But if you already outrank them, you don't need them to link to you!
I'm getting dizzy.

[Martin C]

it sounded like Google has tacitly admitted to giving some favorable weighting to Wikipedia

It is my personal view that Wikipedia got where it is today purely on merit and their pages rank well for a broad range of search terms simply because it is a very popular site that contains good and detailed information.

I don't see any clever SEO going on with Wikipedia and I don't think Google has to favour it as it already pushes all the right ranking buttons and Google will therefore automatically favoured the Wikipedia information based on the number of quality links and content.

There is no mystery, Wikipedia ranks well because it should rank well, it would be odd if it didn't.

[Jill]

I don't believe Google would ever "favor" any particular domain or page. It's all done algorithmically.

[vell]

I don't believe Google would ever "favor" any particular domain or page. It's all done algorithmically.

I have to disagree. I think google favors one domain over all.

google.com

[torka]

I dunno...

Google: "search engine"

Google isn't ranked first for "search engine". Heck, they're not even in the top 10. Of course, they've done a terrible job of optimizing Google.com for the phrase "search engine," so I guess that's only to be expected...

Google: Google

They are #1 for Google (they had better be...) but they don't even give themselves SiteLinks.

Doesn't look like they're cutting themselves much slack, really.



--Torka

[Jill]

I have to disagree. I think google favors one domain over all.

Then you would be wrong.

[nethy]

Wikipedia is the ultimate SE source.... an encyclopedia.
Remeber the algorithim was meant toreflect academia. A source that is often referenced is often thought about and also talked about. Wikipedia is a major source of knowledge these days. It is actually an example of the algorithim working. People are more likely to reference info then anything else that's why it has all the links.