Web publishers have grown very stingy with links, because since Google’s AdSense launched, traffic really does equal revenue (even at lower levels of traffic). For this reason, the one site that got a lot of free link juice was Wikipedia, because it was a non-profit.
Wikipedia over time became the #1 result from a wide array of topics, as Nick Carr illustrates here.
This could have gone unchanged, frankly, but as Google looks for more and more ways to generate revenue from the Web, it’s no longer logical to funnel traffic to a site that refused to run ads, let alone Google’s billboards.
The “evil” option would be to do a Google Shuffle and make Wikipedia tumble down the organic search results. Clearly, a lot of people would go bonkers. The next step, basically, is to launch a Wikipedia-killer. I’m not sure if this will work, but it might, because writers want to get paid and Google will essentially be siphoning a lot of web pages, content, traffic and revenue from the Web to Google’s properties… but ultimately, I think this has a lot to do with what Jimmy Wales and Wikia will do too. Right now, Wikia is, well, what is Wikia, I don’t even know.
But next time Wales decides to say that he’s building a Google killer, he’ll be more careful. More importantly, I anticipate seeing Wikipedia magically slip down the Google results page in the months and years to come. It won’t be overnight, but if Mr. Carr runs the same comparison in a year or two, my guess is that Wikipedia pages will be MIA, or at least replaced by Feedburner, YouTube, Knol pages… that’s not evil, it’s business.
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