Following the decision in January by Wikipedia to strip SEO benefits from outgoing links by adding the link-nofollow tag (see our coverage of how the rule doesn’t apply to certain third party wiki links) the once rampant gaming of Wikipedia has all but disappeared. SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin posted during the week on a new technique being used that instead of building Google juice to a particular site, aims to knock others off the top positions on Google by promoting the position of Wikipedia pages to the top of each specific Google search query. I’m not quite sure exactly what color hat the method may be (and Rand asks the same question), but it is clever.
(via Graywolf)
So the net result of this video is:
if i can’t have the traffic, i don’t want you to have it either.
babies do this. freakin just plain stupid.
I think this points to some disturbing weaknesses, perhaps intentional, in the Google algorythm and a terrible trend that increasingly raises only the largest sites to the top of the Google ratings, regardless of which sites provide the most authorative or complete information on a subject.
I think the intention is for Wikipedia to start ranking for so many terms that Google has to take a stand and put a stop to it.
It really does not matter who is at the top of Google Serps for a particular query - it the page does not satisfy the expectations of the surfer.
The only outcome would be to return back to Google Serps and go to listing #2.
Wikipedia pages do not need an artificial SEO push - they appear to already be prioritized by the algos of Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Wikipedia pages have many factors in their favor:
they are informational pages
they mostly receive non reciprocal links
the mostly receive quality backlinks from other informational pages
they are apart of a domain that has a high trustrank
they are updated fairly frequently
Blackhats call this Google Bowling. Sure, you may not be in a position to promote yourself/your customer, but sometimes bumping off the other guy can be just as good.
Keith
It’s not really Google bombing because the exercise isn’t knocking sites off Google, but substituting them with Wikipedia pages.
Web (comment 4)
Um…yes it does. Traffic from the first result in Google is as good as it gets. Second is ok, but not as good as first. However I do agree that Wikipedia gets a unfairly good run. Google could kill 90% of Wikipedia’s traffic tomorrow if it banned the site from its SERPS.
Very informative (the bits about trusted domains, internal linking, and internal anchor text)…. Just goes to show you how powerful a trusted domain really is.
But like the guy said, it’d be foolish to vault a wikipedia page to the top of the search rankings if you’re also competing with the “enemy” at the #1 spot.
Wikipedia pages are on the top of the search results. I agree with “Web” seo specialist at live journal.
Duncan, that may be the case for one particular query. But if that’s a major hit… You’ve got bigger fish to fry than worrying about Wikipedia. The other thing is, you can control your own title text and explain your site better than Wikipedia can, you can overcome your position to some degree.
I’d love for my competitors to spend their time doing this– it means they are concentrating on my position on a particular term, while I am generally exploring ways of placing myself for multiple others. In the meantime, the competitor, to some degree, is taking the eye off of making their product better.
It’s flattering, it’s worthless for the person doing it, and it’s not sustainable– they have to continue to work on Wikipedia if they want to assure that ranking.
I wouldn’t call it white or black hat, but dunce-hat SEO.
I would still think it worthwhile, if you have a real link to add it to Wikipedia. There is a decent bit of natural link clicking that occurs.
ok — yet another grumble for Google.
Does an “objective” search engine exist — one that ranks based content — not one based on money or tricks?
Check out my new site — googlegrumble.com……..just kidding Michael
Shameful. Some people will do anything for a little link juice.
#4 stated, “they appear to already be prioritized by the algos of Google, Yahoo and MSN.”
Here’s a fact of life that will put many SEO’s out of work.
THE SERPS cannot detect good content. There is no algorithm for it.
What they CAN do, is detect bad/bogus/gamed stuff, and filter it out.
The net result is that the “good” stuff floats to the top.
Think about it logically - if there were an algorithm for “good” = soon everyone would game it, and “good” would no longer be “good”.
That is all, now go make some good content.
I don’t think Wikipedia needs this help at all. I have seen its pages rank highly and often times are very useful so that even if one is lower down the page or on the second page of results search I will still go to it because I know most of the time its up to date.
Interesting idea -
“babies do this. freakin just plain stupid.”
Nah, it’s trying to manipulate how Google deals with content, nothing more nothing less. Business and all that.
I’ve seen this tactic happen before but it seems like Wiki has a very good volunteer staff that re-edits the page quite quickly. Is there any way around this so that the “link” stays on the page? BTW, I have no intentions on doing this. haha
Doesn’t make much sense. Why waste time for nothing ? are you getting anything when your competitor or not making any money ? If NOT, than no point in even thinking of doing such things
its really cool Vmarketics“