1. Using Wikipedia as an SEO Strategy is a Bad Idea
Unique among web sites today, Wikipedia has extremely high traffic (#6 according to Alexa) and an
interface that anybody can edit. This makes the online encyclopedia very attractive from a Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) standpoint, but the site's culture and tools make placing links nearly
impossible and mostly pointless.
The policies of Wikipedia encourage the removal of even the most appropriate external links, and
those which are left are tagged to prevent search engine crawlers from taking note of their
existence. In short, Wikipedia's anti-spam measures make it useless from an SEO standpoint.
Use of <nofollow> on Wikipedia
Due to the interest in capitalizing on the site's unique position, in 2007 Wikipedia implemented the
use of the nofollow value for all links pointing to external sites. An idea developed by Google in 2005,
inserting rel="nofollow" into an html link leaves an instruction to search engine crawler bots to
disregard the link, and not include it in calculating page popularity.
The bots of all major search engines adhere to this instruction. All links leading from Wikipedia to
other sites (excluding others run by the Wikimedia Foundation) include this code, meaning that the
links will accomplish absolutely nothing for boosting a given page's prominence. Despite the use of
<nofollow> to mitigate the trend, links tend to multiply as editors include:
Subpages of an official site, when a link to the main page will do (for example, news.google.com and
images.google.com instead of simply google.com)
Links to several social networking sites as well as the official web page of a band or organization
Fan sites and forums for movies and video games
Other sites in an attempt to build a comprehensive link list, a service which the Wikipedian
community does not wish to perform
2. Culture and Bureaucracy in Patrolling New Links
Wikipedia's policy on external links is summarized thus: "External links to an article can be helpful
to the reader, but they should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article."
Editors that pride themselves on fighting vandalism or spam frequently use a very strict
interpretation of this policy, and will remove virtually any external link unless great pains are taken
to justify the site's inclusion in a given article.
Links are also frequently included in the inline citations used to organize references for Wikipedia
articles, and these links are removed for a different set of reasons altogether. featured article.
Editors well-versed in the subject were citing blogs and websites of known experts in the field, only
to have those references removed because they failed Wikipedia's verifiability criterion, which is
nearly as misunderstood as the standards for notability.
Clearly stymied by the single-minded bureaucracy of the editors involved, Fishkin saw the process as
biased against online sources, expressing frustration at "the bias towards traditional media as more
knowledgeable, legitimate and trustworthy than blogs, industry resources or online-only media."
What Fishkin failed to understand as a third-party observer is that the bulk of Wikipedia's references
are from online sources, but that self-published information (in print or online) is considered a
primary source, which is too close to the subject to be used in any encyclopedia. Blogs, press
releases, and books printed on demand are all examples of self-published sources.
Blacklisting of Pages
Pages and sites that are the most popular recipient of spam links may be blacklisted by Wikipedia's
administrators as a preventative measure of last resort. In 2006, the entire site of Suite101.com was
blacklisted after writers for the site placed excessive links to their articles in an attempt to generate
page views, which at the time was the key criterion for compensation.
Since that time, Wikipedia has instituted the <nofollow> protocol, and Suite101.com has switched to
a compensation model based on ad clicks, but no article from Suite101 may be included as a link or
citation unless an editor specifically requests that it be placed on Wikipedia's whitelist. Even with
the intervention of Suite101 President Peter Berger (his comments can be seen in the above-linked
discussion under username "Berger peter"), the community's only compromise was to "Let the
demand for specific links drive the push to unblock."
Although it is extremely difficult to get promotional links to stick around on Wikipedia, the
community's reaction to the attempt is often harsh and longlasting, as the tiff with Suite101 clearly
demonstrates.
