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SEOs on doing stupid Wikipedia tricks (for the bored)

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The proxy problem in general

David Gerard

19 Aug 2007 19 Aug '07

6:04 p.m.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea. - d.

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Thomas Dalton

19 Aug 19 Aug

6:37 p.m.

On 19/08/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea.

Does that even work? Surely Google isn't stupid enough to give internal links a significant weight? Wikipedia ranks highly because whenever someone mentions a new topic they almost always give a link to the appropriate Wikipedia page for people to find out more about it. I very much doubt internal links have much to do with it.

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geni

6:49 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 19/08/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea.

Does that even work? Surely Google isn't stupid enough to give internal links a significant weight? Wikipedia ranks highly because whenever someone mentions a new topic they almost always give a link to the appropriate Wikipedia page for people to find out more about it. I very much doubt internal links have much to do with it.

Wikipedia is an authority domain. For a non competative keyword simply being on wikipedia will make you rank well. -- geni

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Oskar Sigvardsson

6:55 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Does that even work? Surely Google isn't stupid enough to give internal links a significant weight? Wikipedia ranks highly because whenever someone mentions a new topic they almost always give a link to the appropriate Wikipedia page for people to find out more about it. I very much doubt internal links have much to do with it.

I wondered this too, so I did a little unscientific experiment: click Random Article till you find an article with a positive PageRank and put it into google and see what links to it. If it's only wikipedia pages, then yes, internal links do matter. After a few articles, I found [[Tonga Plate]] ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonga_Plate ) with a PageRank of 4 (not good, but not terribly bad either) and put it into google to see what linked to it: http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FT… Three pages, all wikipedia pages (with PageRanks 5, 6 and 6). I'm by no means an expert on google algorithms, but the fact that [[Tonga Plate]] got a PageRank of 4 using just three links tells me that the weight of the ranking is probably the same whether or not the links are internal or external. Just my guess. --Oskar

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Anthony

7:30 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 19/08/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea.

Does that even work? Surely Google isn't stupid enough to give internal links a significant weight? Wikipedia ranks highly because whenever someone mentions a new topic they almost always give a link to the appropriate Wikipedia page for people to find out more about it. I very much doubt internal links have much to do with it.

Internal links are definitely a significant part of why Wikipedia pages rank so high. There are lots of Wikipedia pages which rank high for a term and have *no* external links to it. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but it's certainly true.

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Thomas Dalton

7:57 p.m.

Internal links are definitely a significant part of why Wikipedia pages rank so high. There are lots of Wikipedia pages which rank high for a term and have *no* external links to it. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but it's certainly true.

High enough to be a top result?

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Anthony

9:10 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Internal links are definitely a significant part of why Wikipedia pages rank so high. There are lots of Wikipedia pages which rank high for a term and have *no* external links to it. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but it's certainly true.

High enough to be a top result?

Yeah. Oskar gave one example. Remember, Google's job is not to be fair or to reduce work for Wikipedia admins. If a ranking strategy on average gives better results, it doesn't matter if there are a few cases where it fails. If people start abusing this, Wikipedia can always turn on nofollow for internal links.

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geni

9:17 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

Remember, Google's job is not to be fair or to reduce work for Wikipedia admins. If a ranking strategy on average gives better results, it doesn't matter if there are a few cases where it fails. If people start abusing this, Wikipedia can always turn on nofollow for internal links.

I don't think free SEO is a problem per se. -- geni

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Anthony

9:27 p.m.

On 8/19/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/19/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

Remember, Google's job is not to be fair or to reduce work for Wikipedia admins. If a ranking strategy on average gives better results, it doesn't matter if there are a few cases where it fails. If people start abusing this, Wikipedia can always turn on nofollow for internal links.

I don't think free SEO is a problem per se.

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem. Might be a big problem, might be a little one. I have no idea.

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Gregory Maxwell

9:33 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

On 8/19/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/19/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

Remember, Google's job is not to be fair or to reduce work for Wikipedia admins. If a ranking strategy on average gives better results, it doesn't matter if there are a few cases where it fails. If people start abusing this, Wikipedia can always turn on nofollow for internal links.

I don't think free SEO is a problem per se.

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem. Might be a big problem, might be a little one. I have no idea.

Right. It's a problem in another way: It degrades AGF. It's harder to assume good faith when there are so many effective ways to abuse the site for personal profit. Did someone add that link because they are being paid to promote it, or because it's actually useful? We can never shut down all the ways Wikipedia can be abused. But when there are holes we can easily close we should do so, if for no other reason than to improve trust in our community.

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Thomas Dalton

9:59 p.m.

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem.

Adding inappropriate links won't be very effective, though, since they won't last long. Is it overly optimistic to expect SEOs to realise that and add useful links?

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Gregory Maxwell

10:33 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem.

Adding inappropriate links won't be very effective, though, since they won't last long.

{{fact}}?

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Thomas Dalton

10:35 p.m.

On 19/08/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem.

Adding inappropriate links won't be very effective, though, since they won't last long.

{{fact}}?

<ref>[[WP:RCP]]</ref>

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Anthony

10:57 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 19/08/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

No, not per se, but if people start adding inappropriate links and/or inappropriate articles (more than before), that would be the problem.

Adding inappropriate links won't be very effective, though, since they won't last long.

{{fact}}?

<ref>[[WP:RCP]]</ref>

This gives me a great idea. I'm going to set up a bot to go through Wikipedia adding random links all over the place. The appropriate ones will stay, and the inappropriate ones won't last long, so in no time flat we should have the perfect encyclopedia.

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Thomas Dalton

11:27 p.m.

This gives me a great idea. I'm going to set up a bot to go through Wikipedia adding random links all over the place. The appropriate ones will stay, and the inappropriate ones won't last long, so in no time flat we should have the perfect encyclopedia.

There's a limit to how many edits recent changes patrollers can revert. I doubt SEOs would go over that limit. Your bot would.

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Gregory Maxwell

9:13 p.m.

On 8/19/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 19/08/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea.

Does that even work? Surely Google isn't stupid enough to give internal links a significant weight? Wikipedia ranks highly because whenever someone mentions a new topic they almost always give a link to the appropriate Wikipedia page for people to find out more about it. I very much doubt internal links have much to do with it.

Yes it works. It's part of why I argued that we should no-follow all internal links into or out of user namespace, and possibly go as far as fully noindexing that entire namespace. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposa… Certainly the problems also exist outside of user NS, the fact that we execute even less editorial control over userpages is why I was singling them out.

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geni

6:38 p.m.

On 8/19/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some idiot, somewhere, is going to think this is a good idea. - d.

Probably. But sooner or later people will figure out it doesn't work. Unless something is seriously non competative you are not going to get into the top 3 on internal links alone. -- geni

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Tim Starling

20 Aug 20 Aug

11:49 a.m.

David Gerard wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU Some 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 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. -- Tim Starling

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David Gerard

12:04 p.m.

On 20/08/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

David Gerard wrote:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSi60Zj6JXU > Some 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.

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participants (7)

Anthony
David Gerard
geni
Gregory Maxwell
Oskar Sigvardsson
Thomas Dalton
Tim Starling