Nielsen/NetRatings recently stated that Wikipeida (the online user generated encyclopedia) is the top online news and information destination after adding roughly 20 million unique monthly visitors in this past year. While Wikipededia’s value as a “source” is hotly debated what shouldn’t be is how they added such a large number of new visitors. The answer to that is quite simple, Wikipedia is Google’s new favorite toy much in the way that blogs were a few years ago.
Google loved blogs when they first began showing up on the internet. Blogs were pretty much custom made to take advantage of Google’s bias towards links as votes of quality and ever updating information. Plus, as a bonus they were run by average people getting their opinions heard. They were “people powered”, not corporation powered, just the kind of idealism that Google loves. Bloggers would by nature visit and comment on other blogs adding to their content. They were also allowed to link back to their own blog to show “where they came from”. With all the commenting back and forth bloggers created a pretty impressive internet eco-system that allowed them to rank more quickly and easily than more traditional websites. Thus comment spamming, splogs, etc.. were created which forced Google to realize just how much power they had given to the blogging community. This necessitated a tweak t0 their algorithm to slow down the gaming of Google SERPs.Â
Now we find ourselves singing the same song just a second verse.  Once again a “people powered” community (Wikipedia) is Google’s darling. Take a look at Google search results for almost anything and you’ll find that Wikipedia is typically right at the top. There are certainly topics which Wikipedia is a good source for but certainly not universally and it seems that Google is so enamoured with Wiki they offer up a high trust rank to just about anything published.  Â
I don’t have anything against Wikipedia per se but I am cautious about what I accept as gospel there. A part of me thinks that if people aren’t bright enough to research other sources and realize when the Wiki offering is biased or out right incorrect then they deserve what they get. But, what troubles me is the mom and pop/hobby sites with great information that are getting pushed down lower in the serps because of Google’s bias. Google needs to re-evaluate it’s “darling” and give a more accurate assessment of how trusted specific information in Wiki is not just a blanket level of high trust.
