Google, Wikipedia and SEO: Does Google Still Reward Wikipedia Content?

[KringleClaus]

Curious as to other's experience here.

I've had a reference in a highly-trafficked W article for several months now. As well, an article about my website just went live on W in ~ the last 10 days. I'm very surprised to see zero impact on my site traffic from this though.

I know G came out recently saying they don't rely on W any more (I believe in part to relieve W's editors from the huge number of spam posts they were being swamped with). W also switched to nofollow.

Still, I thought there'd be somebump?

Has anyone else noticed anything? Presumably those with a bump from W beforehand would have seen it disappear if G was no longer including them in their algo?

- Santa

[JesterMagic]

I think for the most part links now take a while until they affect rank.

I know G came out recently saying they don't rely on W any more

I highly doubt that is true as they rely on W all the time for returning information about a search in their knowledge panels. If they trust it for this why wouldn't they trust the referenced links? There may be a little bit spam but that is rare (name me a site that doesn't now have some articles which is spam). For the most part when I use W I find very little spam.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Purely opinion: Wiki has no special treatment, but the link is probably a better quality link than most. Also a signal that you get traffic from non G sources.

[robzilla]

It's been nearly 14 years since Wikipedia switched to nofollow. The message from John Mueller [reddit.com] was just a reminder that...

Randomly dropping a link into Wikipedia has no SEO value and will do nothing for your site. All you're doing is creating extra work for the Wikipedia maintainers who will remove your link drops. It's a waste of your time and theirs. Do something that's useful in the long term for your site instead, build something of persistent value.

[nomis5]

^^^^^
Agree 100%.

[JesterMagic]

Of course spam doesn't help any site and creates extra work but he doesn't say legitimate links on W doesn't help. He won't say that anyways as all it will do is create more spam for them.

nofollow doesn't mean anything anymore either as Google now says they will apply what they think should be nofollow or not.

[lucy24]

<begin spitting-in-the-wind mode>
The ultimate purpose of a link is to allow humans to follow-up in order to get more information, if only to answer the question “Sez who?” If a link results in the occasional human showing up on your site, all is good; if it doesn't, then you can hardly fault search engines for not giving the link any weight.
</end sitw>

[robzilla]

Of course spam doesn't help any site and creates extra work but he doesn't say legitimate links on W doesn't help.

That's fair. Still, I think it's an outdated notion that a single backlink from any single source can give you a significant bump in rankings. I still cover the basics and chase after links (not Wikipedia necessarily) every now and then but I don't have to do it nearly as much as in the old days.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

W also switched to nofollow.

Google considers "nofollow" as a hint as of 1 March, 2020
[webmasterworld.com...]

[robzilla]

Two important quotes from the Google Search Central Blog post [developers.google.com] linked from that thread:

Why not completely ignore such links, as had been the case with nofollow? Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.

In most cases, the move to a hint model won’t change the nature of how we treat such links. We’ll generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes. We will still continue to carefully assess how to use links within Search, just as we always have and as we’ve had to do for situations where no attributions were provided.

[JesterMagic]

>> Does Google Still Reward Wikipedia Content?

I think it would be absurd if Google did not. It’s one of the few sites on the internet that doesn’t have a financial incentive one way or the other. Of course as with all UGC spam can creep in but for the most part mods keep it out.

I doubt that W site gets any special treatment by the algo and any external links are taken into account for what they are and how W ranks as a site itself when compared to other similar sized sites..

Sites that Google has to be more careful with when considering external links is major media companies. Over the last few years I have seen a lot of them start using more and more affiliate links as a way to generate income as they loose subscribers elsewhere.

While backlinks are important I also think Google applies (or removes) authority signals for a page much more gradually now than before. This way it makes it much more difficult for the SEO community to determine what works and what does not. This is one reason why core updates can inflict such massive changes on the SERPs.

[jmccormac]

Not so sure that Google considers in-article links from Wikipedia important but Wikipedia does have a blacklist for spam links. Some of the search engines, including Google, may use it as a negative signal. As for the content from Wikipedia, Google thought so highly of it that it scrapes it and uses it in its "knowledge" graph to keep people on Google properties.

Regards...jmcc

[JorgeV]

Hello,

In all events, a wikipedia page will ourtrank the source, in 99% of cases.

[n0tSEO]

Still, I thought there'd be somebump?

You will hardly get a rankings bump with W outlinks being nofollow, but if I were you I would be most concerned about the bumb in traffic and conversions, since those are the most important functions of a link.

[jediviper]

All SEO guru say that Wiki doesn't offer anything for ranking.
It's only good for traffic and for helping with the knowledge graph.

But noone should rely on Wiki for anything, as it's very easy for everyone (even a serious business) to lose its page because some Wiki editor decides so.