Hitwise put together some data which shows the increase of Google traffic to Wikipedia over the past year and reveals that Google downstream traffic to Wikipedia is up 166% year over year.
Here are some stats:
- Hitwise data showed that for the week ending Feb 10, 2007, 70% of Wikipedia’s upstream visits came from search engines, with 50% from Google alone.
- Google’s share of Wikipedia’s upstream traffic from Google has increased by 19% over the past year (week ending 2/10/07 vs. week ending 2/11/06)
- At the same time that Wikipedia’s market share of US visits increased by 143%.
Addiitonally, Wikipedia is the 3rd most popular site in terms of Google downstream traffic, after MySpace and Google Image Search:
So, is Google responsible for the growth of Wikipedia over the past couple of years by giving Wikipedia favorable rankings in the #1-#3 position on major search terms?
Or has Wikipedia mastered the Google Ranking system, earning such rankings to the point where they are owning Google?
And, does Wikipedia deserve such rankings and traffic? Your comments are welcome!
Comments
12 responses so far ↓
John Blackmore on Feb 19, 2007 at 11:17 am
I have seen this with many of the terms we work on for organic SEO. I assume it’s because of the inbound links, where people throw their “if you want a definition of this, go here” kind of thing.
So, one of my terms is “business intelligence”. I have 100s, if not 1,000s of pages underneath this, but Wiki beats us on inbounds. I think google is going to have to rebalance from the inbounds and take into account depth of content moreso. Many of us are being forced into link-buys to battle with portals and wikis, when we should have legitimate rankings due to millions of dollars of business in that area.
Adam Jusko on Feb 19, 2007 at 11:20 am
Google has definitely played a large role in Wikipedia’s prominence, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deserved. More often than not, Wikipedia provides one of the best overview pages for a given topic, as an encyclopedia is meant to.
On the other hand, it does seem that Wikipedia gets high rankings at times just for being Wikipedia. Even its pages with sparse content and undocumented information (which Wikipedia itself says is undocumented) end up on top of the results.
One problem with Google is that once it decides a particular domain is very trusted, even the crappy pages from the trusted domains often rank highly. Good for the Web site owner, but not always the best results for searchers.
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 19, 2007 at 11:31 am
I do wonder if one reason why Wikipedia has not implemented Google AdSense or AdWords to help monetize itself beyond donations is the mistrust which may be built in terms of Wikipedia ranking so high for so many terms, then those same/or similar Google Ads being served on the Wikipedia site.
JP Richards on Feb 19, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I wonder why wikipedia is being some brash in their bash of Google in their creation of their own search engine.
Could Google just shut them in the search rankings?
Ahmed Bilal on Feb 19, 2007 at 2:09 pm
not to ruin anyone’s day, but why must we always engage in conspiracy theories?
Wikipedia has become the automatic choice for people looking for detailed information on a topic as much as Google has become the default search engine for so many of us.
Scores of natural links (most of them in-context and totally relevant) afterwards, is it any wonder that Wikipedia does not rank so high?
The fact that Wikipedia’s trusted so much by webmasters in general perpetuates their traffic - a wikipedia SERP will usually get more clickthroughs than other SERPs because it’s instantly recognisable as a source that provides detailed information.
Wikipedia is an excellent example of what Google wants…and sadly, it’s also the perfect example of why Google is sometimes wrong about letting the ‘web’ become the judge about what is ‘authoritative’ and what is not.
Loren - regarding AdSense - that’s probably the information-only idealism of the Wikipedia peeps at work. Ijjits, because they won’t lose much credibility but will get the money they desperately need to massively improve Wikipedia.
If someone buys Wikipedia, the first thing they’ll do is slap ads on it - in a non-intrusive, classy sort of way of course.
Adam Jusko on Feb 19, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Loren,
It would be interesting to see if Wikipedia could have attained its rankings if it had started out using Adsense ads from the beginning. Google sometimes seems to actually penalize sites that rely on Google’s own product to monetize themselves. Have seen this with sites I’ve built in the past.
Ahmed Bilal on Feb 19, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Adam,
No offense, but using Google AdSense from the start has no bearing on search rankings, nor does the fact that you suddenly add AdSense after 3-4 yrs of going ‘clean’.
A website that is genuinely useful to users AND gets lots of links will rank well in Google regardless of AdSense.
Mike on Feb 19, 2007 at 3:56 pm
“when we should have legitimate rankings due to millions of dollars of business in that area.”
That is an interesting concept. Google decides who is most “legitimate” or deserving and who is not. If I find your client’s legitimate pages on top of Wikipedia or other less authoritative options I might not click the sponsored ads.
Google may also be proping up Wikipedia to capitalize on Wikipedia’s growing use by teens and college students. I’ve posted before how my kids and their peers view Wikipedia as THE site to go first for information on any subject. Google may be playing by the adage, keep your friends close but your enemies (competitors) closer.
I do recall too that some years back Google funded Wikipedia to some extent though I may be wrong.
Halfdeck on Feb 19, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Let’s get real here. A ton of sites link to Wikipedia. The blame here lies in the fact that Wikipedia is a link magnent that attracts a carribean-cruiser-load of organic, non-paid, non-exchanged links on a daily basis. If you’re trying to beat that by blowing thousands of bucks on high TBPR sidebar links that appear below texts like “Our Sponsors”, well, good luck.
BTW, tagging all outbounds with nofollow was a brilliant SEO move. That makes Wikipedia a Paris Hilton that gets paid millions every year but doesn’t spend a penny. It virtually destroys the trickle-down theory of PageRank.
Scott Fish on Feb 20, 2007 at 3:05 am
I think it would make an absolute ton of sense for Wikipedia to use some non-traditional type of advertising.
If wikipedia syndicated their own content into topical blog type pages with integrated advertisements, they would make a killing. Simply by taking their most active sections of the site and mashing them together, they could create a newspaper style blog that competes with the major news organizations.
Joe Whyte on Feb 20, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Totally!!!
Adam Tal on Jan 28, 2008 at 4:57 am
Wikipedia… Mastered the Google ranking System? Well I guess that only getting inbound links while all the outbounds are no follow tends to help.
Do they deserve to be there? I vote for no!
But hey Google’s new Knol, will kick their ar*e
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