Is there any value in trying to add a page to wikipedia

[CommT]

Hi Mozzers,

My manager has asked me this question and I'm not quite sure how to answer it.

"Is there any value in trying to add a page about our company to wikipedia"

I would have thought it's very difficult to get a page to stick in wikipedia if it's about a company that isn't huge (like Apple or Google). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Personally I think it's potentially quite risky and unlikely to bring much traffic (because I can't imagine anyone would visit a page on wiki about my company - not that my company isn't great, because it is, it's just not HUGE or global...) I think a wiki page could be a bit spammy!

Would welcome your input, and I am happy to be proven wrong!

Thanks,

Amelia

[GPainter]

One sneaky thing you can do is find a niche write about it and link to it e.g.

You company sells office supplies,

write something amazing and useful on office supplies e.g. a history of office supplies.

you can sometimes get a resource link this way on an article that already exists etc.

obviously this is leaning towards the spammier tactics and the links are still no-follow but if you feel it to be beneficial can be handy trick... but shhh its a secret!

Hope that's helpful.

[CommT]

Thank you, good points...

I'll have to have a think because we probably do have legitimate reasons for being referenced in wiki (our sites are very informative).

Thanks for the tip.

[ecommercebc]

From a traffic perspective, it is really worthwhile doing. We listed a couple of our official European sites on relevant wiki pages and it really brought in a lot of relevant, engaged traffic. SEO-aside, if you have a legitimate reason to maintain some sort of presence on Wikipedia, it's worth it for the reach and potential traffic.

Edit: Fixed terrible grammar.

[seovp]

Hi,

It's definitely worthwhile having a brand page on Wikipedia. Links are no followed and it won't massively increase your traffic but it will help to build your brand and if someone searches for your brand it will more than likely also show on the 1st page.

The Google Knowledge graph also uses information from Wikipedia, so if you aspire to have the knowledge graph show in results for your brand, you will first need a wiki page.

It isn't straight forward getting your brand on Wikipedia though as submissions need to be unbiased and have authoritative citations and references to back them up or Wiki won't publish the page.

Kind Regards

[CommT]

Thank you.

I have tried (in my more spammier days) to get a large (second largest in the UK) double glazing company in wikipedia, and it got taken down. I think this largely because the company in question completely changed my factual copy with salesy bs that should not be on wiki. I think wiki did the right thing taking it off (though I argued against that at the time because it was my job to do so).

[DarrenMOB]

For link juice I would say there is little worth if others are not linking to the wiki page directly.  As a casing point I looked up a local company to me, LUSH are a cosmetics firm who are pretty global and have been in the news fairly regularly.  Their website is DA 59 and PA from the home page 66.  Looking up the wikipage it is only a PA 1, therefore will make little impact on their rankings as far as I understand things.  Still, no to say it never will in the future as it is a authoritative document and wouldn't be considered as spammy.

[HashtagHustler]

Good Morning!

Wikipedia is a strange beast. It ranks incredibly well in Google because it is full of expertise, authority, and is very trustworthy. When writing for Wiki the most important question to ask is how are you going to make sure it stays there.

Wikipedia was built on the crowd sourcing premise. At first anybody could add content, and anybody could modify content. This is why many Universities were/are hesitant to accept Wikipedia as a reference in research. As time progressed, in an attempt to keep things more accurate, wikipedia started giving members more power, and gave them the voluntary job of monitoring sections. For example my brother earned a PhD in linguistics, he voluntarily acted as one of the moderators for anything that was posted in the linguistics section of Wikipedia. He would read everything, spell check, proof, and most important verify, verify, verify.

As a moderator he would look for 3 things:

• Validity- Is this information true?
• Benefit- Does this information progress the body of knowledge?
• Spam- Is this someone just trying to get a link?

The last one didn't happen as often. As much as he loved it, linguistics isn't exactly the hottest subject in the Wikipedia library, but none the less people would add content that on the surface appeared to be beneficial, but was actually superficial and just trying to get a link.

Every subject has a moderator. Everything is moderated now. That being said, the Wikipedia page for the "Olympics" is looked at much more closely than the Wikipedia page for "plastic infused rubber flux capacitor pencils"... A link from the Olympics Wikipedia page will be much more difficult to get, but potentially MUCH more valuable.

Wikipedia links are great, but they can be removed very easily if you are not careful. Find something special about your company to mention. Maybe some big mortgage/commercial trust laws that were passed that you participated in. Some sort of event that received coverage. Something about your founder/ceo. I personally think creating a link simply because your website is informative isn't enough to keep the link there. It might, who knows, but if you can find something else, something that had more of an impact, I would try and go with that. Go big, find something that really had an impact, and put that on wikipedia. If that doesn't work, you can always go smaller.

I also really like PixelByPixel's idea, veryyyyyyyyyy clever!

Hope that helps!

Edit In response to what Darren said (his post went up when I was typing) like PixelPixel said, all Wikipedia links are now NOFOLLOW. So there isn't really a link benefit from doing it. However, seeing as how every category is competing with Wikipedia for placement, might as well use it to your advantage.

Edit I just realized that 6 people posted while I was typing... geeze you are all fast!

[seovp]

You can add a link to the website in external links, but as it's no followed it won't pass any link juice anyway.

The whole point of a wiki page is to give customers more information about a brand and will help to build your brand presence. I've previously had trouble with Wiki trying to get a listing as there was too much bias and not enough references.

[KeriMorgret]

If you get your page to stay, you may have a tricky time making it accurate. We've battled with the SEOmoz/Moz Wikipedia pages. Despite extensive notes in the Talk page from Rand, there are still a ton of inaccuracies in the page (last time I looked).

[CommT]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. I really appreciate everyone's input.

We'll put this in our 'ideas box' because it seems it needs a lot of thought to get right. I'll come back and let you know how we get on and what we decide to do (if we do anything at all that is).

[MarkAse]

I will also note that we have a few Wikipedia links (we're a wine club and have an education section about obscure grapes) and while those are no-follow, we've gained a few do-follow links from people using the information directly from Wikipedia.

Personally, I'd guess that a company specific entry would be valuable, like any link on a site as popular as Wikipedia, even if the positive aspects are second hand.

[CommT]

Thank you Mark, I think you've made some excellent points here.