User:True Pagan Warrior/Be careful what you wish for
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Individuals and businesses with an entry on Wikipedia cannot exert editorial control over content, so if you or your organization has only borderline notability, you may be better off without an entry here. |
Wikipedia has an Alexa rank of six[1] which makes it a pretty tempting place to leverage web visibility. This is sometimes driven by an unawareness of a simple fact:
All links leading out of Wikipedia are nofollow, which means that they don't improve search engine ranking.
That's enough to discourage some folks who want to get that "Wikipedia page," but there are other reasons for wanting one.
- Just because the Google bot isn't crawling it doesn't mean people aren't clicking over to your site.
- Wikicred can establish expertise and credibility, which are always good for business.
- It's cool to tell your friends about your entry, isn't it?
However, being listed in Wikipedia has a very real downside.
- Potentially millions of editors can make additions to the article.
- You don't own an article about you, so you can't control what goes into it once it's created on Wikipedia.
- The Wikipedia community says you probably shouldn't edit the article at all.
So what controls the content of that entry about you or your company, if you don't? Is it the Wikipedia editors? Well . . . yes and no.
- Yes, editors are the ones who add information to an article, based on Wikipedia's standards about reliable and verifiable sources.
- No, in that they aren't allowed to make things up - if it's not in a reliable source it has no business being in the article.
What this means is that negative information, if properly sourced, can and will be put in the article.
Notes
[edit]- ^ "Top 500 Sites on the Web". Retrieved 5 February 2010.