Wikipedia and google

I have noticed that wikipedia is always on the first page result for a lot of goolge searches. (Especially for travel related searches) My issue with this and I would like to know if you guys think the same.

Is that wikipedia is not as accurate. Why I am saying this? Because anyone could go in and write whatever they want! Great democracy you say and this is how it should be. But at the same time you have the admins controlling everything!?

So what happens if I support Arsenal (see football or soccer) and I write that arsenal is the best team in the UK. But the admin supports Manchester United? Is he really going to live my comments? (Ok the example is not great but I don’t want to go into politics)  the same thing could happen to a lot of subjects!!

The same issue with links, if you add a link that you think is relevant to the subject most likely that it will be removed! Even if its related to the subject!!

So does wikipedia really needs to be on the first SERP? Is it really accurate?Please let me know what you think!

PS: I just read some cooments from randfish at seomoz
Wikipedia's credibility is going to suffer; as a source of truthiness, it's great, but the pranksters, spammers and agenda-based edits will eventually make enough of a dent that on any given article, the chances of accuract will be low enough (80-90%) to make it unacceptable as a research tool.

 

Its still more accurate than 90% of the info you read on the web.

 

you've got no idea how much fun I having stuffing up pages on wikipedia..

 

of course its not accurate.. anyone can post there... but its there opinion on what they know about a certain word.. thats why its international... i think one of the purpose of it is to know a unfamiliar word especially those foreign word..

 

Wikipedia is not supposed to contain opinion. It is an encyclopedia. It is supposed to be fact based.

Add relevant factual info and it will stay. Add opinion, or conjecture, or spam and it is sure to disappear.

/tom/

 

your doubt is very good.
according to me,
you already know difference between search engines and directories by that search engines
only trust ,
links, domain ages, user behaviour on that a site.
googles aim is relevent results for a search query

 

I think they are actually closing down open editing.

 

thats interesting!!

to be honest i do use wikipedia for a lot of staff as its very quick to find out more for a subject you are looking. But I always try to not to believe everything!
do you do the same? and what do you think about randfish comment that Wikipedia's credibility is going to suffer?

cheers
stelios

 

I hope so this will prevent so much spammers out there that try to take advantage of such a good idea.

Thank You

 

i dont think so that if you suggest a few relevant websites is spamming! Anyway wikipedia is not earning any money fro this project! so i really dont understand why they dont let people add their sites!!

 

I once had a website about a popular TV show and the link to that site was in the Wikipedia article for years. Then I incorporated that site into a bigger site (mind you that all the content from the old site was still there) and the new link was removed each and every time I added it and labeled as "spam".
I tried to add the link once every day for a few days and after a while some admin actually locked the page from editing because of supposed "spam".

I'm starting to think that the Wikipedia admins are almost as corrupt as the DMOZ editors.

 

That is correct and opinions are almost always removed. Does the thread starter have any actual examples?

 

Wouldn't be surprised if they eventually charged people for the right to edit pages.

 

I usually do not like to refer to posts at other seo forums.. but there is some good info at a thread I started at:

forums*seochat*com/google-optimization-7/google-en-wikipedia-org-91207.html

 

dont abuze wikipedia, its a great resource.

 

I think that there should be a spot at the bottom of the pages where anyone could post their link as long as it is consistant with the topic. Wikipedia should help other webmasters that are finding it hard to get a good google PR. Anyone support this suggestion?

 

no way I think relevant links to the topic to be definitely there

though there may be spam on general topics in educational topics it is very useful I would still recommend wikipedia for children

 

If wikipedia monitered the links and only added non-spam links it would be ok.

 

wikipedia loves to be in the top spots and the googlers loves the entries in wikipedia and the searchers loves what they found. win-win-win. why not?

 

You are not wrong about the fact that they appear on page 1 for many, many searches, and its not just in travel. However, I must say I find their results accurate.I also guess its fair they rank so high because they must have some of the strongest sites linking to them but also a tons and tons of backlinks.