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Yes, I believe that Wikipedia and its authors never put much thought into SEO. They just think about how to best structure the information and make heavy use of

by pvorb 6y ago

Yes, I believe that Wikipedia and its authors never put much thought into SEO. They just think about how to best structure the information and make heavy use of links, which also happens to be a good strategy for SEO. The Google search rank algorithms changed a lot more than the overall structure of a good Wikipedia article in the last 20 years.

aerosmile 6y ago
Have you ever encountered on Wikipedia a sentence like this: "...because a <a>blue</a> <a>whale</a> did..." rather than "...because a <a>blue whale</a> did..." Obviously, the latter version would have been more useful, and I find it difficult to believe that a human being would have made such a mistake. Don't get me wrong - such instances are rare, but they do happen and are an indicator that not all links are generated manually. I don't know what they are using today (if anything), but as someone else pointed out, in the early days they used UseModWiki to ensure a high level of deep interlinking. We can argue that this was done to improve the UX, but the level of ambition that went into it signals that they also saw it as a strategic move (and they would have been right to assume that - 20 years ago, a highly interlinked site was likely the best bang for the buck in SEO when it came to how to prioritize your time and resources).
- germanier 6y ago
  There are actual humans placing such links to the point that there is an explicit rule against doing that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:SEAOFBLUE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:SEAOFBLUE
  - pvorb 6y ago
    Nice! Didn't know about such a rule. Maybe in legitimate cases, it'd already help if Wikipedia underlined links, so you can see if it's one or multiple links.
    - iso8859-1 6y ago
      Some skins do, e.g. monobook: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker%20News&useskin=monobook https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker%20News&use...

by pvorb 6y ago

aerosmile 6y ago

Have you ever encountered on Wikipedia a sentence like this: "...because a <a>blue</a> <a>whale</a> did..." rather than "...because a <a>blue whale</a> did..." Obviously, the latter version would have been more useful, and I find it difficult to believe that a human being would have made such a mistake. Don't get me wrong - such instances are rare, but they do happen and are an indicator that not all links are generated manually. I don't know what they are using today (if anything), but as someone else pointed out, in the early days they used UseModWiki to ensure a high level of deep interlinking. We can argue that this was done to improve the UX, but the level of ambition that went into it signals that they also saw it as a strategic move (and they would have been right to assume that - 20 years ago, a highly interlinked site was likely the best bang for the buck in SEO when it came to how to prioritize your time and resources).

germanier 6y ago
There are actual humans placing such links to the point that there is an explicit rule against doing that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:SEAOFBLUE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:SEAOFBLUE
- pvorb 6y ago
  Nice! Didn't know about such a rule. Maybe in legitimate cases, it'd already help if Wikipedia underlined links, so you can see if it's one or multiple links.
  - iso8859-1 6y ago
    Some skins do, e.g. monobook: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker%20News&useskin=monobook https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker%20News&use...