On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Cox, Serita<Serita.Cox(a)bridgespan.org> wrote: As long as all sites are getting treated equally, it's fine in my book. I only take issue when results are skewed because Google bumps results up/down arbitrarily. -Chad

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Cox, Serita<Serita.Cox(a)bridgespan.org> wrote: So what? Wikipedia's goal isn't to get high search rankings. It's to be a useful resource within its domain. If a search for "flat screen TV" starts ranking online stores higher than [[Flat panel display]], say, that's not something we should be worried about at all. Good for Google for improving its search quality results. (For that particular query it already returns stores, POV reviews, and so on -- which is entirely correct.) If Google is starting to rank us lower than our actual *competitors* -- other sites that aim to provide neutral explanations of factual topics -- then we should be looking at what people might prefer about those sites that would cause Google to rank them higher. It's not like Google is doing anything but matching demand, as far as it can gauge it. If Wikipedia gets moved to fourth place for a certain query, and then everyone skips the first three results to click on the Wikipedia link, I very much doubt we'd stay in fourth place for too long. So, in short: forget about Google. Make a site that people want to read, and you'll get popularity not just from search engines, but also from word of mouth and every other means under the Sun. It's not like we're making ad revenue off people who come to Wikipedia but would really prefer to be someplace else.