Wikipedia Taking Over Google SERPs

[titaneye]

Anyone else getting sick of fighting for rankings with content spam and other junk articles from wikipedia? Seems like wiki is taking over Google serps, I'm actually surprised a soft filter hasn't been applied to the site. Kinda of reminds me of the surfwax com plague that hit Google a couple of years ago, thankfully they were booted eventually. My opinion is wiki needs to be pushed into some obscure corner of the net, and left to find legitimate traffic like the rest of us.

[optimist]

What!?

You mean Google is not another way to search Amazon.com and Wikipedia, Ebay and Bizrate?

[optimist]

Wikipedia is Linkbait!

Since alot of webmasters feel that linking to an authority is the right thing to do to increase their own rankings, Wikipedia has gone through the roof.

[toothake]

"Since alot of webmasters feel that linking to an authority is the right thing to do "
Well not waste your time delete those links if you have any.

[hutcheson]

>You mean Google is not another way to search Amazon.com and Wikipedia, Ebay and Bizrate?

It's a very poor way to search Ebay, for the reasons already suggested. Anyone who wants to search amazon/ebay/bizrate but NOT alibris, probably doesn't know how to read anyway.

[Right Reading]

There are many examples in the recently released AOL search data of people searching in just these ways.

[KenB]

1) What source isn't "incomplete"?

2) How many sources are "completely accurate"?

No source is complete or completely accurate this is why it is important that multiple sources can succeed. When everyone keeps linking to and referencing a couple of "Walmart" type broad spectrum sources, those sources can flood out other good sources, that then have a harder time remaining viable operations.

3) How is Google to know if a Wikipedia article is "incomplete" or "completely accurate"? It's just a robotic search engine. At best, it can "know" (i.e., predict with a reasonable degree of statistical confidence) that a Wikipedia is relevant a given search term and likely to be of value to the user.

I agree absolutly. My personal gripe isn't with Google, rather with people who keep linking to Wikipedia or reference it as their defacto go to source for everything even in matters where it isn't an appropriate source to use (e.g. science).

[mgpapas]

Google is well aware of these sites getting priority.. believe what you want but it's not a coincidence they haven't done anything.

Maybe it's because wiki could be a future Google acquistion?

That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

[shsh]

Buying wikipedia is totally pointless. There is nothing that they could get what they could not have right now. And there is nothing that could prevent others from simply forking and going away.

[viggen]

Plenty of surfers visit my site when researching about the broad history of glowing widgets (it is a site with almost 5.000 self written pages), thinking wow, cool content, copies it and pastes it into an existing wikipedia article (or even worse makes a new site with my content) so he looks smart (or for whatever reason).

I have to identify those articles, delete them, it gets republished (because once it is in the wiki then it must be theirs?), gets deleted again by me, then forth and back discussion in the talk pages, a nightmare, this is an almost daily problem i have to deal with.

Isn`t it disgusting that Google actually encourages content theft by ranking my content on a different page so high?

[KenB]

I have to identify those articles, delete them, it gets republished (because once it is in the wiki then it must be theirs?), gets deleted again by me, then forth and back discussion in the talk pages, a nightmare, this is an almost daily problem i have to deal with.

Don't delete the articles, file a DMCA take down notice with Wikipedia. Then by law, they have to take the articles down. I had to do this on couple of occassions and this did make the offending articles go away permanently.