Wikipedia Conquering Google First, World Next? - The Down Sides of Wikipedia (Page 4 of 4 )
Wikipedia's rise to the top of the SERPs can be explained in part by its institution of using the nofollow tag for all external links. This means that its pages don't pass rank to outside sites. However, it gets valuable backlinks from everywhere, all over the web. Since Google's algorithm is known to weigh links heavily to judge a site's relevance, Wikipedia entries are likely to be considered highly relevant by Google on the weight of links alone.
Wikipedia does very well on the other factors that Google considers. It has a huge amount of content, and that content is being updated almost constantly by tens of thousands of volunteers. If you think about it, there's almost no way it couldn't do well.
That doesn't mean it actually deserves to be at the top of Google for everything. The fact of the matter is that crowds aren't experts. For every Wikipedia entry that hits the top of Google, you're seeing non-expert information privileged above quite possibly superior information from experts.
Wikipedia's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Anybody can edit it, but that truly does mean anybody. It has always had a problem with spammers and others putting in inappropriate content or vandalizing entries. At least one college history department has quite rightly forbidden its students to cite Wikipedia as a source on papers.
It's disturbing to think that a source known to be inaccurate in many areas consistently reaches the top of Google's results. But it's clear that Wikipedia has somehow hit on Google's magic formula for reaching the top of the SERPs. We can learn from this, apply the knowledge to our own sites - and make sure what appears about our companies, products and services in Wikipedia reflects the truth.
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