Wikipedia is often at top of the results because it's often the most interesting content who answer to the request...

Wikipedia is googles worst nitemare – theres an article on Jimmy Wales /wiki's something ago, on how Wiki search may just take away a big slice of the search from google..!!

It often shows up, but it's often one of the most informative result. I often use Google to search wikipedia directly, as it can sometimes work better than using the Wikipedia built in search.

When using Internet Explorer, you can set the search textbox to the Wikipedia site – so it goes to Wikipedia directly. This is useful when you are reasonably confident that the result will be available on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia proves you don't need to buy thousands of bucks worth of paid links to rank on Google.

We often say we want AI behavior from the search engine. I think this one is the closest, most tangible effect to it (intentional or not :) Of course Wikipedia results show up when i type isolated words, abstract concepts, etc., etc. because when i type them i want a description (that could be just me, but i don't think so :) + Wikipedia is one of the biggest, most visited, most linked to, fastest growing sites on the web, if not the best in some of those categories, so i can't find a reason why they shouldn't appear :)

I don't think Wikipedia will be taken over by Google, at most there is/will be some kind of cooperation like there is (/was :) with ODP, which is fine by me because it would build towards the AI idea i mentioned above..

Most blogs will link interesting words to Wikipedia. Isn't it obvious that it will become the top result? Wikipedia writes nearly everything in laymens terms, therefore will be useful to the average reader.

Wikipedia may be one of the worst sources of information available, but it's hardly dominating all of Google's search results. People don't need to perpetuate Wikihysteria by pointing out these types of misleading attempts to stir the pot.

People who fear about Wikipedia's results are SEOs or Webmasters, not USERS...

Google makes money by improving the quality of their search results and by displaying increasingly targeted advertising. Their goal is not to show *more* advertising, but more *targeted* advertising. Their primary metric of quality is PageRank, and Wikipedia has the highest pagerank density of all sites on the Internet. Simply having Wikipedia content improves the quality of Google SERPS and makes them money.

But it doesn't stop there. As a function of the number of Wikipedia articles, Google is able to show advertising to users who are looking for very specific topics. This means very targeted advertising. Google is thus able to show people the advertising they want to see, making them happy, and they are sending them to the webmasters who sold Google their screen real estate, making them happy as well. So the relationship between the two is no mystery. Google is by far the biggest monetizer of Wikipedia content.

Anyone remember "mesothelioma"? [1] Take a look at the number one result for that keyword.

Cheers,
Brian

[1] http://www.internetvibes.net/2006/03/27/this-list-of-the-highest-paying-google-advertising-keywords/

Is anyone thinking about the good old days when text-messages where presented in HTML (or even plain text) and not in videos?

pd

In my experience wiki's search sucks. I sometimes use "site:wikipedia.org" on Google, but unless what I want to know about is barebones (like "George Bush") Wikipedia doesn't give me the articles that I am looking for. But I am used to searching with google, so maybe my style is wrong for Wikipedia.

But I really don't see how Wikipedia negatively effects Google at all. Perhaps because it makes people search less for information. But people still search for the info...and from my personal experience usually on Google.

I'm confused. What was the point of that video?