Popular ArticlesRecent CommentsTop Moneymakers
  • zac439: I’m taking a little break from my normal workload, and just found a killer new blog to add to my...
  • Brooks Donner: If the students start working for Gannett, they better not say something that Gannett does not agree...
« New Internet Access Pricing Scheme based on Usage?
AuctionAds / eBay affiliates - Expect Lower Revenue »

Is Wikipedia Losing Ground in Google Serps?

I happened to notice something the other day –

vBulletin-faq.com always has been near the top of the Google Serps for almost any vBulletin related keyword I sought after. Normally, if you search for "vBulletin" you get vBulletin.com, vBulletin.org, Wikipedia vBulletin page then vBFAQ. To my delight I noticed the other day that vBulletin-faq.com replaced Wikipedia in that slot and now ranks ahead:

 

So I started looking around and found Wikipedia has dropped a few spots in the rankings on various other searches. Now this isnt scientific, its just a casual observation on my part. But it makes me wonder if this is just a fluke change in algorithim or is Google starting to downgrade wikipedia in anticipation of the upcoming Google Knol? I would like to hear other’s thoughts on this so leave a comment.

While we’re on the subjects of Wikipedia and Google, I ran across this:

The professor of media studies at the University of Brighton has had enough of students turning in "banal and mediocre work" and decided that Google and Wikipedia must go. Tara Brabazon provides her students with a reading list, of books, and expects their work to reference those works, rather than a rehash of a Wikipedia entry or the top five results from Google. To achieve this she has, reportedly, banned her students using search engines and Wikipedia. ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/wiki_google_ban)

I found it humorous.

 

Share This

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Basic Rants and Raves, Blogging, SEO, vBulletin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Is Wikipedia Losing Ground in Google Serps?”

  1. » Comment by Qryztufre
    January 24th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    WIKI is a fantastic resource, but that teacher is correct. Kids need to once again learn to use primary resources rather then tertiary. (wiki gets 1st slot for tertiary). As, rather then using WIKI, they should be updating it with their findings ;)

    Regardless though, I do think that Google may finally be catching on that Wiki is not the end all of all knowledge. Maybe they are giving more primary and secondary sources higher billing… where it’s deserved.

    vb & vborg should out rank vb-faq. Vb-faq SHOULD out rank WIKI… that’s just the way it should be. I’m certainly glad that’s the way it is now.

  2. » Comment by Joeychgo
    January 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Thats how I have felt all along! :)

Let us know what you think, leave a comment


Close
E-mail It