It is well known that Google puts Wikipedia pages on the first places in its results list, and for many people it seems that they are the best sources sought by them. But is this really so?
From personal experience everyone knows that sometimes this is so... but in many cases it is not. So we often wonder, "What are those reasons that make Google to arrange the found sources so that Wikipedia articles to be always at the first place?"
See also the related questions about Wikipedia
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Citing_Wikipedia11?
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_electronics_Wikipedia_inside_and_what_are_Wikipedians_inhabiting_this_area2
@Eric, for Wikipedians SEO is not a point of consideration at all. We (I'm admin and editor for the German WP) work for free information for all people in all languages. If you want to find something on WP, you can get it very easily by searching on WP pages.
I agree, the ranking algorithms place WP pages high, usually. But that's not the intention, rather it's a consequence of the basic idea of intra-linking all possible information for the benefit of the reader not the search engine.
I'm pretty sure the position in the search results list is mainly a measure of how many other web pages link to a given site. So I think it makes sense that Wikipedia would be pretty high up the list, as it an effective and common resource to link to for greater depth on an issue.
For instance, check out more on the google ranking system here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
See what I did there... ;P
Very impressive and extremely interesting answers...
Ryan, an impessive contribution... but what is your WP user name (if it is not а secret)?
Joachim, as I recall, Facebook used the same system... and this costed them a lot of trouble, right?
It's highly related to Wikipedia's page rank and doesn't really present anything related to the quality of contents in Wikipedia.
Thank you for the ideas - but as I indicated in another discussion on Wikipedia - still we need to be careful - though it might be the first to pop up and the easiest to look at... but, we need to be very sure of the information... while some of the information might be VERY CORRECT- but the fact that others can edit until the editorial board come to see this - is a bit scary.
Interesting question, a couple of comments:
1) Wikipedia is so powerful that it becomes self-organic. Here we have a question on RG about Google and Wikipedia and the very first answer refers us to… Wikipedia ;-)
2) As already pointed out, the rank in google is by no means a benchmark of quality of the contents of the page. In a sort of non-rigorous answer, google rank has only to do with the likelihood that others clicked wikipedia when they performed a similar google search
3) even the editorial board of wikipedia does not possess the whole truth. So wikipedia is also a kind of "podia" of well established knowledge, but it is not the right vehicle to find the avant-garde of every knowledge-domain
Dear Professor Cyril Mechkov, Wikipedia knowledge database is huge exhaustive but we can say about the 100% authenticity of the source and the knowledge. Coming at the top our search results is due to PageRank algorithm of the search engine.
Since Google---or any other search engine---does not have the capability to rely on the *semantic* priorities induced by your query, it has to rely on the PageRank or some other ranking independent of the semantic content of the query. In view of its enormous popularity, Wikipedia would always be high up in any such ranking.
I think it depends on the number of visitors of each web page, Wikipedia has a high ranking and number of visitors.
Because the web masters of Wikipedia work hard with SEO and after that are google algorithms that put that web site very well ranked.
It is a very interesting fact. Surely, Google exploits the Page Rank algorithm through MapReduce techniques. Thus, it is clear that a site like Wikipedia has a large number of visitors and thus a large fitness.
Indeed... the higher the number of visitors - the higher the chances that this site will appear the first... My advice to my students not to bring anything from google or Wikipedia - for their assessment - and in case they need to bring in news they need to go to FACTIVA.
The point is that WP articles are supposed to be informative (in most cases a correct supposition). I think the underlying reason for placing WP articles high on the result page is that WP is supported by Google running data centers in Florida and Amsterdam. Anyway, I'm happy to have WP as a starting point linking to more information on the Web --- without commercials.
It is mostly about the Page Rank Algoritm. However, it does not always happen. I have entered search strings wishing for, and assuming, that Wikipedia will land on top and then it landed up 5th or 6th. I now type www.wikipedia.org in the browswer line if I want the answer from Wikipedia and search within it.
Dear Professor Cyril Mechkov, Wikipedidia is on top because of PageRank algorithm of the search engine powerful database .
Wikipedia's crosslinking and categories also improve the link count of individual pages, and the emphasis on generating highly structured documents (with heavy use of subheading tags) also helps. The convention of putting a good summary in the first paragraph and picking out the key phrase in bold in the first sentence, and fact that there are so many articles that individual articles are often highly specific and focused probably doesn't hurt either. Add to that the fact that it's a high-traffic site, incredibly popular, and with fast load times and constantly updated information, and you have a recipe for high rankings.
Edvald,
I'm not sure that the WP guys work that hard on SEO, I think it's a byproduct of having a big popular site with good machine-readable structure.
For an example of WP getting SEO horribly wrong, look at the rankings of their images on Google image search. Last I checked, Google only indexed the thumbnails and refused to follow the links!
The reason why seems to be this: If you upload "My_picture.jpg" to Wikipedia, the site will generate a thumbnail (which Google will read), but the link from the thumbnail doesn't go directly to the large image as expected, it goes instead to an intermediate description page at "File:My_picture.jpg", which in turn links to the actual original image.
That description page contains metadata from the original file, plus WP categories, and a WP description.
Trouble is, the "File:My_picture.jpg" URL terminates in a file suffix that's meant to signify an image file, and it's NOT an image file, so Google search refuses to index it, which means that not only is all the lovingly-assembled additional image metadata invisible to Google, but Google also never gets to find a link to the original file. The trail stops at the thumbnail.
I told the WP guys about this, and they didn't seem to have known about the problem - when it was explained to them, seemed to take the position that it was Google's problem, and not theirs.
So while the WP guys do work hard on WP itself, SEO ... not so much.
Eric
Cyril, what is not known about Google and Wikipedia is that, they secretly meet at night and conspire against everybody else, and this is how the Wikipedia links get on top of Google listing :) JJUUUSSST kidding :)
The answer is the PageRank algorithm : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagerank
Clearly, this is what we know about the algorithm !!! There is a reason why Google is almost the highest valued company in the stock market (~$350B), just a touch below Exxon Mobil ($400B) ! Wikipedia links are accessed very often ... So, they naturally crawl on top ... This algorithm ranks internet information based on RELEVANCE, and trust me, nobody knows the intricate details of their algorithm, including Microsoft !!! I remember the days a few years ago, where, Microsoft was accused of getting the search results from Google's website and displaying them :)
Also, don't forget something. Google is NOT a NON-PROFIT company, although Wikipedia is ... So, Google's intentions are very different. There are two ways to get on top of a list on a search : ORGANIC, and INORGANIC.
There are a bunch of companies that try to sell you SEO (Search Engine Optimization). They ORGANICALLY re-adjust the contents of your website using meta tags, the content, the relevance of the pages of your website etc ... so, Google ranks you higher ...But, that's a cat-and-mouse game. They have to adjust it every month, and there is no guarantee. I have seen SEO contracts that charge by "your monthly ranking," but, they cannot guarantee a ranking !!! ORGANIC means, the structure of the web site itself ranks high according to the Google algorithm ... So, no reason to pay for clicks ... INORGANIC means, you pay Google, they rank you higher :) Now, that is an algorithm all of us clearly understand. You buy CLICKs per month ... There are e-advertising companies like DoubleClick, Inc (which, in fact got bought by Google itself) that place your e-advertising money with search engines, so, you come up higher in the rankings ...
One more comment on whether WP guys work hard on SEO. The harder you work, you don't necessarily going to rank higher. With SEO, you are trying to outsmart Google's algorithm, which, by definition, doesn't like the SEO idea, since they would like you to pay for clicks. So, Google's job is actually pretty hard ... balancing MAKING MONEY FROM CLICKS vs. PROVIDING THE MOST RELEVANT SEARCH RESULTS in the middle of a bunch of people trying to outsmart their algorithm !
@Eric, for Wikipedians SEO is not a point of consideration at all. We (I'm admin and editor for the German WP) work for free information for all people in all languages. If you want to find something on WP, you can get it very easily by searching on WP pages.
I agree, the ranking algorithms place WP pages high, usually. But that's not the intention, rather it's a consequence of the basic idea of intra-linking all possible information for the benefit of the reader not the search engine.
I think that the policy of Google relating to Wikipedia is based on the idea that " if you are not able to destroy the movement you should lead it and to change the direction in accordance with your interests".
@Alexander: Google doesn't seem to give Wikipedia any special treatment, either good or bad.
I've set up a site that uses MediaWiki (the same open-source software that powers Wikipedia) and done some testing, and while Google loves the category crosslinking and the use of heading tags, after that, the page ranking on individual pages really does seem to depend on old-fashioned things like the amount of relevant original content, good HTML structure, good crosslinking, and quality incoming and outbound links.
It's a shame that Google doesn't read the "image information" pages, but frankly if I was Google, I wouldn't read them either - disguising executable files or HTML files with embedded scripts as innocent .jpg files is a classic malware vector, and whoever designed MediaWiki made a rare mistake when they took that approach to info pages. I they'd chosen a different URL terminator for the info pages, like MyPic.jpg-info or MyPic.jpg/info then Google wouldn't interpret the URLs as pointing to malformed image files, and they'd be indexed properly.
Hi Michael!
I do think that the "search engine visibility" problem for original images and their info pages will have to be addressed at some point.
It's an "open access" issue: WP is trying to convince various public heritage organisations to upload their entire libraries to MediaWiki, on the grounds that this will make the libraries more accessible to everyone ... but if MediaWiki has a design flaw that prevents those images and their metadata from appearing on major search engines, then that makes WP a much less attractive option as an image repository. WP can't compete with dedicated image search engines, and shouldn't function as a walled garden where you have to do one image search for WP and another for the rest of the internet.
I think that part of the reason why WP originally took off so fast with so little promotion was that potential contributors saw the high rankings of other WP pages ... and I think that part of the reason why more organisations don't embrace WP/WM for their image libraries is that they don't see other organisations' images appearing on WP in their search results.
Wikipedia is indexed as dictionary for any kind of query thats why Google put Wikipedia pages at the top of its results list...
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