John Naughton examines the loop between Wikipedia and the major search engines and asks whether the encyclopedia is now as dominant as Google
Wikipedia is as much part of our cultural fabric as is the notion of search. My daughter asks me a question - I first ask her has she used Wikipedia? Not have you looked it up in our out of date encyclopedia...
We google someone, something, somewhere....
There are two kinds of people in the world - those who think Wikipedia is amazing, wonderful, or inspiring; and those who simply cannot understand how a reference work compiled by thousands of 'amateurs' (and capable of being edited by any Tom, Dick or Harry) should be taken seriously. Brisk, vigorous and enjoyable arguments rage between these two camps, and provide useful diversion on long winter evenings.What's more interesting is the way Wikipedia entries have risen in Google's page-ranking system so that the results of many searches now include a Wikipedia page in the first few hits. There are several reasons for this. One is the sheer size and comprehensiveness of the online encyclopedia (1.6m articles in English when I last checked). Another is the burgeoning trend whereby bloggers, when mentioning a person, place or product, link to the relevant page in Wikipedia to avoid a digression from their discourse. They use Wikipedia links, in other words, as footnotes. A third is that fact that if you add the work 'wiki' to any Google search, you will be given the URL of an apparently relevant page from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, you are the strongest link Nice headline.
And in fact I am guilty of this very behaviour myself.
Funnily enough, I added a link to the external links on wikipedia for a new microniche site I launched. It's been crawled by google for a fortnight and on wikiP for a handful of days. Guess which one is the larger referrer so far? Yep WikiP. I think that reflects how poorly google copes with niche. On wikipedia you can add a link where it is really relevant - and where it is found by someone using the same terms you are. On google the user could use the same terms but if your visitor number or links to and from etc etc etc (the dark science of google which even google seems at a loss to explain) but you won't appear on the first 20 pages.
There is a gap in the google armour, which I think they are trying to address with their 'custom' search engine is attempting to address - anyone having much joy with that yet?
Posted by: David Cushman | January 30, 2007 at 10:06 AM