MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

In mid-June, an NBC host died of a heart attack, and not unusually, the network delayed reporting it so that his family could be alerted. But the news broke on Wikipedia prior to the announcement on television, because a junior network employee updated a Wiki biography – and changed it to the past tense. The story probably got out of hand because people who heard the rumour Googled it, landed on the Wiki biography on the first Google SERP, noted the tense, and spread the news.

This raises a number of issues: of all the places to update news, why was Wikipedia the obvious and most effective choice; how did the nature of search affect the story; and what impact did Wikipedia as a source have on the framing of the news?

From a search engine’s point of view, Wikipedia is a voice of authority – the number one organic result - on subjects ranging from data recovery to Zip the Pinhead. Wikipedia’s rules support strictly neutral points of view as “the most important editing guideline”, and it has the power of the people on its side. I’d argue that if information appears on Wikipedia, it’s often accepted as common knowledge (“But even Wikipedia says so!”).From that point of view, it makes huge sense to publish news on Wikipedia if your aim is to attract attention. Although users may edit articles without registering for a username, everyone has to follow the “Wiki process” of citation checking and board approval before publishing content – so Wiki knowledge is both popular and verified. In the story of Tim Russert, because Wikipedia was well ranked (and that affected the way visitors received Wikipedia’s news), search engines helped to spread the facts about how he died unexpectedly.

From an SEO’s point of view, Wikipedia can be a useful tool for publishing neutral information, although many SEOs think its authority is unearned. I can’t see any harm in entering Wikipedia’s Adopt-a-user mentorship program and learning how to play the game, especially as whingeing about its relationship with Google is pointless. Because smart SEOs will keep up-to-date summaries of their previous Wiki contributions, and are in a position to understand Wikipedia’s outgoing and incoming link architecture, they can be successful contributors to Wiki’s knowledge base. As long as they understand knowledge neutrality and are able to see the difference between facts and bias, Wikipedia can be a useful social tool – just like Digg or Facebook or LinkedIn – within an holistic search marketing solution. If SEOs learn how to use Wikipedia for news and commercial knowledge dissemination (and they probably will, if Wikipedia sustains Google’s favour), we may be looking at a Wikipedia revolution.

From a reader’s point of view – and with copyleft licensing, this is the most important viewpoint – Wikipedia is not always the best source, but it’s the quick source. Through search engines, Wikipedia’s contributor base is growing exponentially, which supports its basic tenement that any author may contribute to its articles. I’d argue that in this way, Wikipedia is getting to be more right, more often – as the story of the newscaster demonstrates. To me, this example of news breaking first online (out from under television’s nose) is a forerunner of a general leaning towards publicly compiled information, with Wikipedia as its running hero.