It’s been another year, so it’s time to re-evaluate my theory that Wikipedia is becoming a standard reference and will soon be the number one hit for notable people in the world. Consider my two previous discussions here:
Again, I will Google for all the people in my list, and show how their results compare to last year and the year before that.
Those results are compelling: the average placement of the Wikipedia page is:
Clearly, the Wikipedia page for a notable person is fast being considered the single most important representation of them on the Web.
Two years back, I also checked four media personalities — Cary Grant, Brad Pitt, George Lucas, and Client Howard — to see where the IMDb ranked in their results. This year, their IMDb page was first for all of them. So, the average looks like this:
Last year I introduced books to the mix, in an attempt to prove that a book’s Amazon listing is equivalent to a person’s Wikipedia page. Here are this year’s results, compared to last year’s:
These results are much more mixed. Average placement of the Amazon page:
The Amazon page ranking actually got worse.
Until next year…
About a year ago, I opined that Wikipedia was quickly becoming a "standard reference," meaning it was a base repository of information about a subject -- the starting point. This is reflected in how high Wikipedia rates when searching for notable people. What I think this points to…
More and more, Wikipedia articles are creeping up the search results when you search for famous names. I tested this theory a bit tonight, and here's what I found when searching for nothing but the first and last name of someone famous: Bill Clinton: 3rd result Condoleezza Rice: 2nd George W. Bush:…
Clearly, the Wikipedia page for a notable person is fast being considered the single most important representation of them on the Web.
That's assuming Google Pagerank to be a good determinant of that. Isn't there some tight relationship between Google and Wikipedia that gives precedence to info in Wikipedia in a Google search? I recall reading of some controversy about that recently.
