Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Today, a Google search for "cranberry glass" brings up that Wikipedia listing on the first page. Google reports over 1,000,000 sites, but puts this new article, a month old, on the first page of results. Isn't there something wrong here?
I see Wikipedia ranking highly for many searches. Doesn't this undermine Google's claim to return authoritative sites? Anyone can change any article at Wikipedia; the site is subject to vandalism constantly. People can write all sorts of false information, and yet Google thinks highly of any page at that site, it seems. In my example, I really find it difficult to believe that an article that is only a month old is linked to. Why is this new article considered authoritative enough that Google puts it so high?
(I hope the moderators will not censor out my example of "cranberry glass". I use it only as an example and I have no interest in any site on this topic.)
At the same time, my view is wikipedia articles generally should rank about #20 for most stuff. Seldom are they the best resource, but usually they offer decent content.
(1) Compare wikipedia to the slovenly work at Encarta, or the miniscule articles at encyclopedia.com. There is really no comparison; there isn't another comparable encyclopedia online or off. Many bad things COULD happen to it; the fact is, most of them don't. (There's a virtue in living in the real world rather than obsessing on paranoid fantasies.)
(2) Google, like other indexes, favors large sites with second-order stability. Overall, this is a feature, not a defect. A defect. Sure, Aunt Millie COULD have a better cranberry glass page, but she COULD equally well be already contributing to Wikipedia. And people who are primarily interested in providing content tend to migrate to the large cooperative sites. And so Google's acceptance the "imprimitur" of an online community that has itself gained the imprimitur of many users is -- a successful imitation of the way reputation works in the real world.
Does the concept of "reputation" work perfectly? Of course not, and no imitation of it can work any better. But giving a page on a highly-reputable site an exceptionally high ranking is only reasonable, even if it doesn't always achieve the ideal results.
Personally I love it when I enter a query and a wikipedia entry appears in the results - I know, or at least believe, I have at least one good result. Which is precisely the opposite to how I feel when an About result appears, and both are often there together. In fact I often append the word 'wikipedia' to the end of a search if the original results don't look too promising.
You can't just assume there won't be wrong information at ANY website these days. I don't think Wikipedia is any more prone to bad info than most other sites out there.
If you "love it" when wikipedia shows up in the SERPs and if you "often append the word 'wikipedia'" to your queries, wouldn't it make more sense to just search wikipedia itself rather than use Google and hope a wiki article shows up?
While many wiki articles may be top notch, beren has given us a very good example of an article which has no signs of authority (other than it being on the wiki site), but which ranks number one nevertheless.
When did Google start ranking individual pages based almost entirely by the site they appear on, regardless of the age/IBLs/content of the individual page? I don't really care for the "everything on site A is great/everything on site B is supplimental" SERPs coming out of Googleland these days.
The number one result in Google was a page from a (very)large travel site that Google regards as white-listed.
Apart from the heading, the sum content on that page about the relevant destination was the following sentence:
THERE ARE NO ARTICLES ABOUT ZZZZLAND
On every field there are experts in the world, but many don't maintain a website themselves, yet they have loads of valuable information. What I often see is that someone starts an article on Wikipedia with basic information which is not always 100% correct. Within a few weeks a real expert has found the page by accident, sees the incorrect information and edits it until there is a really good article from an authorative source. Those expert editors would never start their own site, but editing an article on Wikipedia is easy, doesn't cost any money, and no technical website knowledge is needed.
The fact that you don't have to sign up may attract spammers, but in my niches, the number of experts that contribute because it is so easy is far higher than the number of spammers. And in general the editors do a good job to remove spam quickly.
Isn't there something wrong here?
There might be.
But, in general, among the 100+ factors that Google say they take into account when ranking SERPS, your page is likely to score highly on several of them.
It's reassuring that Google has picked a gem from the garbage and held it aloft.
Many of the complaints on WMW are the opposite: Google failing to spotlight lowgrade commercial waste product.
abbeyvet,If you "love it" when wikipedia shows up in the SERPs and if you "often append the word 'wikipedia'" to your queries, wouldn't it make more sense to just search wikipedia itself rather than use Google and hope a wiki article shows up?
Thanks for the handy search tip. :) I do which ever is handiest. Wouldn't it be nice if eveyone used the internet in predictable ways?
My point was that I think most average searchers will be pleased by the appearance of a wikipedia page in their results, in the vast majority of cases they will have found what they want or at least a good path to it via some quality hand picked links.
As someone else said,the Wikipedia article is probably better than someone's crappy SEOed site-o-affiliate links.
One can generalize all day long about how many wiki pages are informative and have strong IBLs. But that misses the point of the original post, doesn't it?
I think the point is that G ranks pages (and now entire sites?) by signs of quality but can not determine actual quality.
That's the way search engines work. However, the larger the disconnect between supposed quality and actual quality determines the true functionality of the engine.
People with an interest in whatever the subject is will easily find it, edit or add to it and it will evolve over time into something worthwhile, even if it did not start out that way.
A similar guess about a page on other sites would probably not have this effect, especially a made-for-adsense page, whose owner would be very hesitent to mess around too much with a high ranking page, no matter how poor it was in reality.
Welcome to planet earth. You will enjoy this place, Here, we have organizations like the BBC, Smithsonian, NYT, Project Gutenberg, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CACM, NASA, CIA, Encyclopedia Britannica (well, nine out of ten isn't bad) ... all the way down to the dude who admits to being the world's greatest authority on christian men, explaining how much christian men need water heaters. All free.
You may never want to go home again. Of course, earthling porn is expensive, and so are ring tones for your cell phone, but the former should be of no interest to you, and I understand you extraterrestrials prefer to phone home.
How long will these examples of free good content be able to survive?
Wikimedia has an interesting survival bar at [wikimediafoundation.org...]
Can you afford to finance free good content?
If you can, go ahead and supply it. Otherwise, you should have a pretty good business model to maintain it.
Nevertheless, I found quite interesting Wiki's keyword density and page format. I found it so interesting I made a copy to dissect it.
sure but someone else is, and they can correct you if you made a mistake. If you had put that article on your site, no one else would be able to edit the errors. That's the difference.
Are you saying that relevance should be determined by how good a particular page may be in the future?
Sounds like a great opportunity for infant webmasters. Websites by babies have nothing but potential, and thus deserve to rank top ten every time!
What is wrong if a page from it ranks well if it is relevant?
When did Google start ranking individual pages based almost entirely by the site they appear on, regardless of the age/IBLs/content of the individual page?
From Florida, IMO.
I don't really care for the "everything on site A is great/everything on site B is supplimental" SERPs coming out of Googleland these days.
Bad times for small players. That's way I closed my small sites and I have been working on an authoritative site since Florida. And I am still far from the wikipedia in my language.
There is one that I come across a lot Investopedia. It ranks remarkably well for many phrases. At times, I think too high because they often have one line explanations.
The thing I don't like about Wiki is that it ranks well on lots of topics. Some of which it should, others which are questionable. It is also better for students or someone that is truly researching a topic because it has more information than the average person cares to read. Stated another way, if you're looking for a quick anser, Wiki is not the place to be.
When did Google start ranking individual pages based almost entirely by the site they appear on, regardless of the age/IBLs/content of the individual page? I don't really care for the "everything on site A is great/everything on site B is supplimental" SERPs coming out of Googleland these days.
I HEAR ya! I've recently had a major player move into my sector and it is killing me. Things didn't used to be like this. I definitely see G returning results almost entirely based on the site they are on, and not the individual merit of pages. Like someone mentioned before, I am going to have to close down a lot of small sites and try to become an authority in an increasingly difficult market. If G continues this path, the mega-giant networks like CNET will take over the internet.
