robzilla - 8:53 pm on Feb 22, 2011 (gmt 0)

One of many dark secrets, no doubt. Search engines have no obligation to play by the rules they make public.

I'm not filling gaps in their site with content - the content will be published on my website and merely linked to as a citation in Wikipedia.

But was that your original intent? Would you have created that content, had Wikipedia not missed the citation? It seems to me that the idea stems from wanting a link from Wikipedia, but your new content turns out to be more valuable than you expected in that it "has provided some newsworthy information." That's terrific -- and it started as a desire to fill the gap of a missing citation as a means of attaining a link on Wikipedia. It just goes to show that thinking outside the box when it comes to link development or content-creation can have widespread effects.

You speak of a merger of thoughts from a couple of threads. I think I've read through most of those, and what I've been wondering is how successful in terms of search engine rankings these techniques you discussed have been for you. Assuming this is mostly for one particular website, is it gaining momentum? Are these newly attained links noticeably working their magic? Clearly, they're much more fun to go after! Perhaps that's an end in itself.