Should A Charity Clean Up Wikipedia?
As anyone working in Search Engine Optimisation will tell you, for many short-tail terms the SERPS actually start at rank two. No matter how many links a black hat buys, or how many articles the white hat throws at the ever creaky tumble-dryer of article spinning, there’ll always be someone above you. Thankfully that someone is Wikipedia, an organisation you’re very rarely competing against.
Oh, saying you’ve outranked Wikipedia is certainly a badge of honour among engineers. Even if you buy into Google’s promise that they have no under the table deals with the encyclopaedic gargantua, the way Wikipedia is structured is uncannily suited to gaming the algorithm. From the inside, it has wall to wall content bunged with keywords, pages that are legitimately named and H1-nd with relevant key terms and an internal link structure to die for. And from the outside you have an entire spectrum of sites linking to its content legitimately.
But regardless of the kudos you’d get from outranking such a Google-friendly website, the reality is that, unless your client is a reference website, Wikipedia is not offering or promoting a rival service. Wikipedia’s supposed commitment to neutrality also means that people are unlikely to read its content and abandon their initial intention to peruse the first page more thoroughly. In a best case scenario, Wikipedia may even be the appetiser, the impetus for clicking immediately on whatever is in position two.
If You Can’t Beat Them…
But what if you are in competition? This is the dilemma currently facing Cancer Research UK. Despite being the world’s largest independent cancer research charity, they are consistently outranked in the SERPs by Wikipedia for cancer-related keywords. In the case of ‘cancer’, they are second fiddle to Wikipedia’s privileged initial position (though they have a paid ad in there). For many specific cancers, the gulf is greater.
This leaves Cancer Research UK’s pages underused, but more importantly, there is concern that people seeking information about diagnosing, treating and coping with cancer will be given information that is inaccurate, unclear or improperly pitched. These are common issues for Wikipedia content, but they seem especially pronounced here, given the gravity of the subject and the fact that quality alternate sources already exist.
Consequently, the BBC is reporting that Cancer Research UK are getting its staff to edit Wikipedia. The old adage of ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ rears its head again.
Those who have cancer, or know someone with cancer, will inevitably try read up on as much information as possible. You seek to ‘know your enemy’, as they say. But Wikipedia isn’t pitched at the layman, despite its commitment to clarity and plain English. Cancer is simultaneously a disease that a vast range of people can be suffering from and that people can be studying. Whereas Cancer Research UK can pitch its articles specifically at the masses, Wikipedia has to account for the educated few. The content is (or should be) purely descriptive, offering little in the way of practical advice or insight.
Caught in the Crossfire?
The BBC claims that in January 2011, Wikipedia received ‘3.5 million page views for cancer-related content’. It’s difficult to believe that a majority of these views are from students of medicine and biology. Cancer Research UK’s interest in swaying the content of Wikipedia isn’t unprecedented – Many SEO engineers are still interested in getting links from the service, unperturbed by NoFollow links and an effective editorial team – but it seems likely that intervention, even from a charitable source, could prove a major sticking point for the Wikipedia community.
So far one verifiable contribution by the group, a page on a peer-reviewed article entitled The Hallmarks of Cancer has battled with a Wikipedia bot questioning its notability and sources. Even without dicing with such typically opaque Wikipedia politics, the Cancer Research UK team will have their work cut out attempting any stylistic changes that make Wikipedia more accessible for general users.
And honestly, it’s easy to see why Wikipedia editors will resist such changes. Manipulating the content of Wikipedia to benefit any organisation – even a charity – presents a massive ethical stumbling block for the service. This goes well beyond the collective service’s right to pitch its content at a certain level. Even as a charity, Cancer Research UK has its own biases, and would naturally favour citing research it has funded, or even referrals to its own content. Consider, that for many cancer related terms, Cancer Research UK isn’t second to Wikipedia: it’s fourth or eighth or tenth to competing cancer charities.
As is so often the case, Google is the root of the problem. This seems like one of those cases where charities should be prioritised, rather than forcing them to change the content of a competing result in order to get their point across. Or perhaps the worry should instead be that ten years on, people still don’t treat Wikipedia with the level of distrust it probably deserves.
Guest post by: Steph Wood is an SEO Copywriter and Blogger writing on behalf of Vanquis Credit Cards. Follow Steph’s twitter: @stephwoo286
