Kev Price SEO

Wikipedia – it seems you either love it or hate it.

For a long time now large sections of the SEO community have been have been asking the question, ‘Why does Google love Wikipedia so much?’.

I think the answer is obvious. Google is lazy.

Ok, I will give Google a break and admit that they have a very difficult job in working out what people want from search results, trying to understand the context of search from only a few results.

However I do think they have simplified things a little too much.

If we ask ourselves ‘why do people search?’, we will come out with answers along the lines of:

1. For information (referencing/definition/answering questions)
2. For opinions
3. To find/purchase a product or service.
4. To find a specific site (Google is the new http)

There will be more, however I think all reasons for searching are very similar and can probably be placed into any of the four categories.

So now, when running the majority of search terms Google hedge their bets.

Their ‘Universal search’ brings back the top results from the different categories of search.

Amongst the majority of search results you will get:

1. Referencing information - such as Wikipedia
2. Sites with the most relevant URLs you may be trying to find / Relevant well known brand related to terms
3. Opinion/Review or blog
4. Top product or retail sites relating to term where relevant.

So Google put Wikipedia in the top ten every time because it is an easy way to give the user ‘referencing material’ relevant to their search and covers one of their bases within ‘Universal Search’.

So it would seem that SEOs are no longer competing to get in the top 10 of the SERPs, they are in fact competing to get in the top two results for one of the four categories that Google list on every page.