Wikipedia talk:Search engine optimization

A Bold Edit

I've created this page as a way to begin a conversation between Wikipedian and SEO practitioners. People looking for links in Wikipedia are a major source of linkspam. We can help reduce the problem by educating the SEO community about Wikipedia. The info here may exist already in other articles, but many newcomers simply don't have the time to read through dozens of different articles. My hope is that we can gather info for SEOs here so they can quickly understand the right way to contribute to Wikipedia. Jehochman (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a good first step, Jonathan, but as some SEOs have been quick to point out, link-dropping is not all about PageRank and link popularity. There are people who do it strictly for the traffic and Wikipedia's use of "rel='nofollow'" will in no way diminish that kind of link spam.Michael Martinez 23:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this page out there. Here are some comments for SEO folks:

1. We don't blacklist domains lightly. Non-Wikimedia Foundation wikis that also run on MediaWiki software default to using our Wikimedia blacklist although they can opt out of this. I've heard there are about 1500 to 2000 wikis that use this software although I don't know if that includes all the Foundation's several hundred projects such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc in different languages. Also, I understand that within the black hat SEO community there are rumors that the search engines may be consulting our blacklist as one input in compiling their own blacklists. There are no formal guidelines on blacklisting, but if you skim the discussions about different cases as m:Talk:Spam blacklist and WikiProject Spam, we don't take blacklisting lightly and generally reserve it for either very widespread or persistent spam cases, in part because the repercussions may extend beyond Wikipedia.
2. For the many white hat SEO folks that have truly useful sites and really feel that they should be linked to Wikipedia -- most "useful" sites don't make the cut, commercial or not. That's because they're probably "self-published" and we want links to meet "encyclopedic" standards. A quick skim of the Verifiability and "No Original Research" policies will give a sense of our concerns. Since anyone can post anything in a blog or a forum, those links aren't allowed by the External Links Guideline.
3. As of a month or two ago, Wikipedia had about 1.5 million articles and about 3 million external links. If I were to guess, probably 20 to 40% of the external links don't meet the External Links Guideline; most were added in good faith by innocent editors who didn't know what the standards are. Then within that group, there's a smaller batch that were spammed.
4. Unlike the links I marked with a "skim" above, the External Links Guideline is worth a close read by SEO folks.
5. SEO folks should feel free to delete any competitors' spam links.
6. Don't ever add an entire spam article -- these can really backfire. Once someone's created it, anyone can edit it, including your competitors and all the editors who're annoyed by your violation of the Conflict of Interest rules. All edits have to be "encyclopedic", so petty vicious stuff will get taken down, but expect any unflattering articles or lawsuits in the public record to get added to your article. Two that I'm familiar with is LegalMatch and Web.com; the PR people at both companies are now having fits trying to get adverse information removed. The damage is multiplied by Wikipedia's high page rank in the search engines and the credibility so many readers give Wikipedia articles (often too much in my opinion). Article deletion discussions also get picked up Google and can be embarrassing; see for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Delgrosso and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suite101.com.
7. Contrary to popular myth, Wikipedia does not object to ads on sites per se or Google ads in particular. We have lots of links to Time magazine, etc. There are certainly Adsense-monetized pages that meet our standards. It's just that we also see a ton of low-value, scraper sites with Adsense ads, so you'll see a lot of discussion on our anti-spam pages about Adsense pages; when you do, we're referring to the garbage sites. (I spend a lot of money on Adsense for my own business, so I've certainly got nothing against Adsense.)
8. Not all of us spam-hunters "hate" SEO. I've been called a "Wikipedia link-Nazi" on some SEO site yet I've spent good money on some SEO stuff for my own sites. It's just that we're putting together an encyclopedia and we don't want to get our content "optimized" any more than Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book does. We're not Dmoz.

--A. B. ^(talk) 20:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I belatedly thank you for these excellent comments. I will incorporate them into the essay. Jehochman (^Talk/_Contrib) 09:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)