Comments on: Google and Wikipedia

By: Thomas van Dam

Thomas van Dam — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:38:26 +0000

If you’re using the “multi search box” on your personalised Google homepage, you do have the option of searching directly in Wikipedia. This might have increased traffic from Google to Wikipedia, although I do not have any numbers concerning the usage of multi search.

There are just some queries that you *know* you will end up at a Wiki article

By: eas

eas — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:27:10 +0000

Anyone know of a Greasemonkey script that will pull wikipedia results out of the top of the google results list and stick it at the bottom?

By: Google Tutor

Google Tutor — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:41:41 +0000

I'm on JG with this one. I would say Google's primary purpose is to be there as the point of entry for most users, and to drive traffic to relevant sites. So if you're looking for something your tendency is to go to google.com and not elsewhere.

Now whether or not Google gets something back from that site (monetary, or otherwise) should not have an effect on Google's bringing up relevant search results and driving relevant traffic to those sites.

As for searching, I usually do my wikipedia searches on Google because it's just so darn fast. And I get what I'm looking for on one page, with snippets of text from the results. Wikipedia only gives me a relevance percentage, and I can't make heads nor tails out of that unless I click and open the pages listed.

By: Vera

Vera — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:13:06 +0000

Wikipedia will eventually have some real trouble from brand names – when it dominates in Google on a brand and has an entry written poorly and filled with inaccuracies, people get upset and litigation will follow. So far this has been difficult, but the dominance of wikipedia in Google (and the fact that many people are naive enough to believe it is an accurate “encyclopedia”)puts them more in the line of fire should new case law develop in the future. Anyone using wikipedia as their research source to write a book should only be writing fiction.

By: Norm Potter

Norm Potter — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:04:16 +0000

My feeling is that Google will eventually stop indexing Wikipedia. Don’t forget Wikipedia are setting up their own search engine, not using algorithms but using user voting to rank sites.

By: Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:04:10 +0000

I tried adapting AdSense for Wikipedia via a GreaseMonkey script, but the AdSense bot is blocked from the entire site, preventing any of the ads from showing proper contextual content. They really don't like advertising over there...

By: dg

dg — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 05:38:44 +0000

I wish there was a way to set my Google preferences to omit results from wikipedia.

By: JG

JG — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:06:52 +0000

Sorry for the repeat posts. I kept getting a MoveableType perl script error each time I posted; I didn’t realize the post was actually going through. Please delete my multiple postings, if possible.

By: JG

JG — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:05:29 +0000

I was this week just realizing that more and more of the searches I do take me to Wikipedia. So why do I search on Google when I can just do so on Wikipedia?

Because Google, when it is doing its job correctly, will only take you to wikipedia for those instances (for those queries or topics) for which wikipedia is the most relevant link. For other topics or queries, some other site may be more relevant. So the reason that you would go to Google instead of directly to wikipedia is, essentially, to cover two birds with the same stone, i.e. to know (1) whether wikipedia is the best answer source for your query, and (2) simultaneously give you that answer if it is, or give you some other web page if it is not.

By: JG

JG — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:46:18 +0000

I was this week just realizing that more and more of the searches I do take me to Wikipedia. So why do I search on Google when I can just do so on Wikipedia?