On 20/08/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXUSome idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea.
I guess I'm an idiot then, because I think it's a good idea.
I meant for SEO :-) The really advanced Googlemancers get like New Age conmen, selling snake oil so refined the customers think scientific falsifiability is the mark of an insufficiently advanced service and logical thought and joined-up thinking are oppressive constructs out to crush the human spirit.
I don't think we have to wait until we have a top ranking "enemy" in Google search results, I think we can add more internal links to everything regardless of the circumstances of the particular article. Because we want Wikipedia to rank highly, and we want readers to have an engaging surfing experience where they can follow their curiosity from article to article, across all disciplines and fields of knowledge. Heavily-linked articles are an important part of Wikipedia's style. If the SEO people want to help with that, that's fine by me.
I think the key to our vastly successful search engine optimisation is not having given a hoot about the notion of search engine optimisation. I remember when our Google rankings were so bad that our own mirror sites frequently came first and the Wikipedia article would be on page three. But now we're a highly "authoritative site" (in Google rank terms), and I suspect it's precisely because we do what's right for the content and the reader. We do well by doing good.
- d.