My last article about Wikipedia—An Untapped SEO Opportunity: Image Link Love From Wikipedia—prompted an Orwellian mantra: instead of "four legs good, two legs bad," people have started saying "images good, text bad" and wondering why the difference. The short answer is the Wikimedia Foundation created a white hat opportunity for SEO to generate outgoing links via image uploads. The strategy hinges on a copyleft licensing option called CC-by-sa, and the decision isn't accidental. They're glad to trade some link love in return for quality content. Or, as Wikimedia communica [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search & Social | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEO: Image Search

Continuing on with yesterday's preview of SMX Social Media -- Search Engine Land's first Search Marketing Expo show focused on social media marketing, I wanted to talk briefly about a special session we're doing for the first time: Wikipedia Clinic. The idea behind the session is simple. Many people are concerned about how they are listed at Wikipedia but are uncertain how to approach requesting changes. To guide them, we have a session running before the Wikipedia Clinic called Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing. That session will talk about general Wikipedia advice, tactics, an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEM Industry: Conferences

Gary Price picked up on a major change coming to the German Wikipedia, where only "trusted editors" will be able to make instant changes to the online community-driven encyclopedia. This change is coming to the German Wikipedia later this year, and it may follow suit on the English version of Wikipedia as well as other versions of Wikipedia. Basically, anyone can make changes to an entry, but those changes will first have to be reviewed by a "trusted editor" before they can be visible to the public. Gary makes several excellent comments about this change. It is important to note that this [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Wikipedia

Wikirage is yet another Wikipedia data mining tool. This one lets you see what topics are hot by quickly identifying the 100 most edited articles for the last hour, day, week, or month. If you like to track rising keywords and memes, this tool is a fine place to start. The lists include something for everyone. Yes, there’s a lot of editing around future video game releases (Killzone 2), and kiddy characters like Harry Potter and Hanna Montana. But there are also serious topics like Luciano Pavarotti, and Hurricane Felix (2007). Do you have an unnatural lust for gadgets? Something ca [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Wikipedia

In Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, the Wired Blog Network reports that Virgil Griffin, a Caltech graduate student, has released a Wikipedia Scanner search tool that identifies edits by corporate IP block. Just type in the name of a corporation to see what sort of anonymous Wikipedia edits have been coming from their network. As I write this, Diebold, Scientology, Dow, ExxonMobil and Disney are the top rated spin jobs. What does this mean for search marketing professionals? If you are involved in reputation management, you'll want to make sure your clients aren't did [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Marketing: Public Relations

Suppose your company, boss or political candidate discovers that their Wikipedia article is wrong, or has subtle inaccuracies that nonetheless paint them in an unfavorable light? Most people unfamiliar with how Wikipedia works consider only two solutions: edit the article or sit on their hands. Unfortunately, neither approach typically results in the optimal outcome: a factually accurate profile containing trustworthy information. Search marketers and reputation management professionals should know that there are legitimate ways to correct errors in Wikipedia. Knowing the right way to f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Social Media Marketing

I am a Wikipedia administrator, and I specialize in complex investigations. When Jonathan Hochman suggested I write an article for Search Engine Land, he mentioned that this publication and its readers regard Wikipedia as a search engine. It probably comes as no surprise that my spine stiffens at that concept, but media professionals and Wikipedia volunteers seldom understand each other. So I'll illustrate my perspective with an example: let's have a look at some politicians. I cite this instance because it was not one of the cases I handled and it has already been in the news. On Janu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search & Social | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEO: Writing & Body Copy | Social Media Marketing

Featured on the home page of Wikipedia today is the search engine optimization article. Recently, Wikipedia asked SEOs for help in editing the SEO article. Many decided to lend a hand, while others felt it would not be a good use of their time. Earlier this year, Wikipedia reinstituted the nofollow attribute on most of the external links within the articles. Some called Wikipedia on a double standard for not implementing this policy straight across the board. In addition to this controversy, there were cases when Wikipedia's actions sparked a debate in the search marketing community. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General

It happens to many companies: their Wikipedia page evolves and starts reporting bad stats, inaccuracies, legal stories you thought were water under the bridge and more. Wikipedia is a web 2.0 success story, and almost always ranks on page one in Google search results for your brand. Anyone can make changes, and there is little you can do to keep the public from adding, expanding and telling your story, their way. While you can’t make it disappear, you there are things you can do to mitigate the visibility of any negative content on your company’s Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is a free-for [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: Public Relations

Earlier this year, Wikipedia pondered whether Matt Cutts was notable enough to continue having a Wikipedia entry. Good sense prevailed, and his entry remained. Now debate has shifted to whether the entry about search engine marketing should go. Oh, and apparently Search Engine Land has an entry that might also get deleted, since we might not be notable enough. Time for the SEM villagers to grab torches and storm the Wikipedia castle! Well, perhaps we can be calm and rational about all this. Let's start with search engine marketing. The entry is here, and the debate over killing it can be found [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Wikipedia

A popular Wikipedia editor Jehochman has requested that several respected SEOs contribute their time to editing the SEO wikipedia page. As you can see on the discussion page Jehochman said on May 16th, "I've invited half a dozen editors who have experience with this topic to evaluate the references." While some SEOs are helping with the SEO article, others like Rand Fishkin believe it is a battle we cannot win. By that, he means, since Wikipedia entries can be edited by anyone - there is nothing stopping someone from coming in and changing all the work they would put into the article. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEM Industry: General

Many have joked about how Wikipedia seems to rank at the top of practically any Google search that you do. Often, that's a good thing, as Wikipedia has lots of great information. But a search on george washington today shows a downside. Someone edited the start of the Wikipedia entry about the first US president to be less than flattering. Google spidered the entry, and that material was used to form the description of Washington's Wikipedia page, as shown below. Look at the second listing: It's embarrassing for Google, but the fault really lies with Wikipedia, since this text stayed on W [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

"Who knows about Wikipedia?" asked Neil Patel. "Everyone," he answered. And this is exactly why the session "Wikipedia and SEO" was completely packed at the 2007 SES New York show. Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the panel featured Neil Patel, Co-Founder of ACS, Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, Don Steele, Director of Digital and Enterprise Marketing at Comedy Central and Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President of JE Hochman & Associates. So why exactly does everyone know about Wikipedia? For starters, it is pretty hard to ignore a site that consistently ranks in the t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Wikipedia | SEM Industry: Conferences

Wikipedia's importance as an authority site is undisputed. It's at the point where it seems a bit ridiculous how often Wikipedia shows up in the first page of Google for just about every search imaginable. In many cases, these Wikipedia entries are extremely light on content. Oftentimes they are what are known as "stubs," just the very beginnings of an article. Personally, I think Google is giving too much weight to Wikipedia. Take for instance a search on the word marketing in Google. The top spot has been awarded to the marketing entry on Wikipedia, yet it is not the most authoritative or [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Social Media Marketing

Techcrunch discovered that Wikipedia was giving special treatment to their own properties, in terms of using standard, non-nofollowed, links to Wikia, "Wikipedia’s for-profit spin off." Back in January, Wikipedia nofollowed all external links from the site, in an effort to reduce Wikipedia spam. If you visit the Wikipedia page on Wikia, you may notice some external links do not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. Techcrunch calls them out for it. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Search Engines: Wikipedia

The term "social search" is kind of a catch-all category now for a range of companies that are bringing people back into the algorithm. Not only are these companies seeking to improve search results with humans, they're trying to differentiate vs. Google from a marketing standpoint on that basis as well. Eurekster, ChaCha, Jimmy Wales' Wikia Search and PreFound are just four among many examples. These companies are all doing interesting things but there's a kind of "noise" now that creates a marketing challenge for anyone competing in the space. Trying to rise above that din, PreFound relaunc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia

Google Traffic To Wikipedia up 166% Year over Year by Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott gives us some of the data search marketers have been craving for years. We all knew that Wikipedia tends to rule in the Google results but these statistics show us by how much. 70% of Wikipedia's upstream visits came from search engines 50% of the search engine visits came from Google The percentage of Google's downstream traffic going to Wikipedia increased by 166% year over year Last week Wikipedia was the #3 website in Google's downstream This is eye opening data, but I would not consider this shocking, at [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Other | Google: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Stats: Hitwise

Impressive. Scanning the latest top web sites rankings from comScore for January 2007 , Wikipedia sites are highlighted for just entering the top ten most visited. OK, technically -- they're in the top ten for having the most unique visitors. In December 2006, Wikipedia sites were ranked 13th of all US web properties, with 39 million unique visitors. In January, comScore says Wikipedia rose to ninth ranked, with 43 million visitors. The top ten, to provide perspective, rounded to the nearest million: Yahoo Sites, 129 million Time Warner Network, 117 million Microsoft Sites, 115 million Goo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Features: General | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Popularity

The Wikipedia search engine has arrived -- Wikiseek -- but it's not the Wikipedia search engine you're thinking of. Wikiseek is completely different than the Search Wikia project backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that I wrote about last month. Below, a look at the disappointing new service along with a revisit to how it is different from Search Wikia. The idea behind Wikiseek is simple. Crawl only content referred to within Wikipedia itself, which the site boasts will make it better: The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages and only those sites which are referenced [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Engines: Wikiseek

Jimmy Wales was interviewed live on the BBC Simon Mayo programme this afternoon. It was an interesting conversation, mainly centred on the Wikipedia obviously, and geared towards an audience who wouldn't be expected to know much about the subject. The interview started about 30 minutes into the programme and you should be able to catch it for a couple of days in the archive (linked from the webpage) before it disappears. I have done a quick attempted verbatim report on it in my weblog though cannot entirely vouch for its accuracy 100%, but it might be of some interest. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General | Search Engines: Wikipedia