Do they deserve to be there? I vote for no!
But hey Google’s new Knol, will kick their ar*e

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Could Google just shut them in the search rankings?