How Google Utilizes Wikipedia To Optimize Search Results
Wikipedia has an outsized presence in Google search results, as information from the digital encyclopedia is perfectly structured to answer user search queries. Let’s explore exactly how and why Google utilizes Wikipedia in order to improve search results.
Why Wikipedia matters for Google
Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia ever created, with the English-language edition alone spanning more than 6 million articles and 57 million pages. Because of this breadth of information, Wikipedia is one of the most significant websites on the internet, serving over 260 million monthly viewers.
According to SimilarWeb, Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website with over six billion monthly visitors that lean on it for valuable information.
Being such a ubiquitous source of information, Wikipedia has a massive presence on Google. Wikipedia articles appear on the first page of 99% of all Google searches, often ranking as the number one result.
How Wikipedia content appears on Google
Wikipedia content appears as a top organic result in many Google searches, especially for queries about people, places, or things, because Wikipedia articles provide general overviews of these topics, and are thus relevant to search intent. Just think of how many times you've immediately clicked over to Wikipedia after searching for a topic of interest.
But just as often (if not more), Wikipedia will provide an answer to a search without a user having to click on a link, as Wikipedia content is a prominent Knowledge Panel component. A Google Knowledge Panel is the box on the right side of the page in which the website displays relevant information beside the search result. The Knowledge Panel will often retrieve the descriptive information about the entity (person, place, thing, etc.) directly from the first two sentences of the entity's Wikipedia article.
Google also pulls information directly from the body of Wikipedia articles as part of Featured snippet responses and People also ask results.
Featured snippets are text snippets linked to web pages that Google believes provide concise, direct answers to queries. Featured snippets occupy special boxes at the top of results pages and may be displayed as a paragraph, a bulleted or numbered list, or a table. The descriptive snippet text is shown first, followed by the URL. Wikipedia often appears in Featured snippet results for queries phrases as questions, e.g. "what was Microsoft's first product."
People also ask results are the accordion-like boxes that appear near the top of search results and show one to four questions related to the search query. Each suggested question expands to reveal answers that Google has pulled from other websites (including Wikipedia), along with links to said websites.
For example, "What was the second Microsoft product?" appears in the People also ask box for "What was the first Microsoft product" searches.
When you expand that entry, you see an answer drawn from the Microsoft Wikipedia article, along with a link to the site.
Categories and Lists on Wikipedia
Wikipedia organizes the millions of articles on the site through categories and lists, among other measures, and in some instances, these sorting mechanisms will have an impact on Google search results.
Categories are used to link articles under a common topic, in the same way that bookstores group books together around similar subjects (e.g., literary fiction, history, mystery, poetry, romance, et cetera). This categorization helps Wikipedia users find the pages they are looking for, even if they're not sure exactly what they're looking for.
Every Wikipedia article should belong to at least one category Here's what the category box for Microsoft looks like:
These category pages will themselves appear in Google search results, for example:
Google is always trying to provide users with the best answer to their questions, and in many cases, Wikipedia category pages will provide that answer and thus rank highly in search results.
Lists are closely related to Categories, but they contain much more information than Categories do. Lists on Wikipedia often appear as top search results for related queries, e.g. "List of software developed by Microsoft."
The more categories and lists a Wikipedia article appears on, the larger its digital footprint will be on both Wikipedia and Google search results.
How brands, companies, and individuals can improve their Wikipedia presence
Now that we’ve detailed just how important it is to have a strong presence on Wikipedia, let’s get into how you can ensure a Wikipedia article has accurate and up-to-date information.
It should be known that all edits on the site are made public, and Wikipedia will display specifically who made those edits. Likewise, when there’s a conflict of interest at hand, the website wants to see full disclosure and no direct edits, only talk-page requests (see quick guide here). Wikipedia editors will remove or revert changes they deem are not properly sourced or are deemed biased. That’s why it is important to be as transparent as possible when considering proposing changes to a Wikipedia article.
Getting changes to display on Wikipedia may take some time, but getting well-sourced and factual information onto a Wikipedia article can last a lifetime, all while improving its Google standing. This is why Wikipedia projects that follow the site’s rules take longer than most expect, but doing so is also the only way to assure a long-term solution.
