How To Overthrow A Wikipedia Result
A busy ranking artist runs into this problem quite often. I ran into it again the other day and figured I might as well show my Blue Hat peeps how to overcome the same problem since its a fairly popular problem to have and there is a simple solution to it.
The Problem
Your site is holding a particular rank and a Wikipedia page is ranked right above it. The specific ranks don’t particularly matter, but much like Hillary Clinton in the primaries you can’t possibly live being beaten like that. You have to drop the Wikipage down a notch and you have to continue moving up.
The Simple Solution
The simplicity of this tactic actually depends very heavily on the Wikipedia entry. Either way they’re all very beatable, but some are easier than others. In fact as mentioned I just ran into this problem recently and I managed to knock the competitive Wikipage entirely out of the top 20 in just two days using these steps. First you need to understand why the Wikipage ranks. Most of these pages rank for 3 reasons.
1) The domain authority of Wikipedia.org.
2) Innerlinking amongst other Wikipedia entries boosting the page’s value. <- Particularly the *See Also’s
3) Inbound links from most typically blogs and forums. <- An observant person would not only notice the high percentage of links from blogs/forums in contrast to other types of links but a strong lack of sitewide links from any of those sites.
You obviously can’t do anything about the domain authority of Wikipedia.org but understand that it’s pages are like a tripod; If you knock out one of the legs the whole thing falls (pun). Well now that you understand why it’s there right up above you like a towering fugly friend of the girl you’re trying to hit on the solution becomes obvious. Knock out reasons two and three.
Steps
1) Using your favorite link analysis tool (I prefer the simplistic Yahoo Site Explorer) find all the pages that link to the particular wikipedia entry that come from the wikipedia.org domain.
2) Go to each listing and find the reference to the offending Wikipage. You’ll find most of them in the See Also section or linked throughout the article. This is where the simplicity that I was talking about before comes into play. Listings such as “Flash Games” or “Election News” are easier because they’re so irrelevant. When people are searching Google for terms such as these they’re obviously wanting to find actual flash games or election news, not some faggy Wikipedia page saying what they are. The same concept applies to other Wikipages linking to them. Just because the author put the text Cat Food in the article or the See Also doesn’t mean its a relevant reference to the subject matter.
3) SLOWLY remove nearly all those bitches! Be sure to leave a good convincing reason for the removal on the editing reason. Remove as many as possible but strictly limit yourself. I understand Blue Hatters have a tendency to overdo things but you’re just going to fuck yourself if you quickly go through each and every reference and mass delete them. If you don’t know how many you should remove, then keep it to no more than 1-2 a day. Remove the references with the highest pagerank first if you got a ranking emergency and switch IPs between each one. This will either knock out one of it’s legs or at least cripple the leg a bit. Which leaves you with my match and exceed philosophy.
4) Find all the blogs and forums that link to that Wikipage and go drop a link in as many of them as you can. Match and exceed. 
I’m not going to dive into the nofollow talk on this one or talk about the benefits of links via blog comments. Just realize your goal in this instance isn’t to get more links it’s to get your link on the same pages that link to the Wikipage. As mentioned above you’ll be dealing mostly with blogs and forums, you’re in the same niche as the topics they’re talking about obviously and you probably won’t have any sitewide links to deal with so you won’t have to go through any link begging pains.
5) Try to drop your link into the article. This is common sense.
Side Note
Wikipedia’s domain authority isn’t something Ý0µ should be entirely worried abouṪ. They’re site and µrl structure actually ßÊcomes favorable to help deaden some of the heightening factors.
OH FYI! There is now a Printer Friendly link on every post on Blue Hat by popular demand
Can’t dropping a link to a wikipedia page get you black listed and maybe even put you into a G penalty?
Go back to reading Shoemoney, john chow, zach johnson, dave naylor etc. We’ll welcome you back when you get a bit more experience.
Who are those guys?
Shoemoney? and John Chow? Those guys are the ones making the big bux with blogging, and off course other online ventures as well.
As far as the wiki overthrowing, man… it seems really hard to do, hehe.
Man, some of the people commenting on this blog must have had pretty mean parents when it comes to dishing out names.
Have you not tried bombing in a load of gutter spam links into a wikipage? It’s likely to make it rank better, but sometimes pumping some bilge in will tank a site.
you shouldn’t make fun of Jane. i’m sure she will learn from reading this blog that you can’t get blacklisted for simply suggesting a link in wikipedia is not legit.
True i agree with you, we should not offending the newbies. Great articles el
Lolz..
I think it can but im not certain.
I guess Google will never let a site ranking better than wikipedia. Is that a problem? Not really as everybody knows that Wikipedia isn´t commercial at all.
I partly agree with you in this regard(but don’t agree 100%)
the reason for this is that i believe google has given a HIGH MANUAL PRIORITY ADVANTAGE to sites like wikipedia, about.com , etc.
Although this is a very informative post I don’t think I would dare follow your method. Yes, people are saying that it is OK but…
WOW! Genius. Going to try this later today.
Yes Jane, you are correct. If you link to Wikipedia, or get a link from them, you’ll generally find your whole domain algorithmically banned within a couple of hours.
I’ve never had problems outranking Wikipedia pages - as an observation, has anybody found a deep-page within Wikipedia that gets Sitelinks within Google? It seems to be Google is aware, that Wikipedia is rarely “the” source for a search and is a general repository of knowledge and thus never seems to get cemented #1 rankings.
If I could see an example of the above, I’d be very interested.
Mark,
Are you being sarcastic or am I not understanding what you are saying?
He’s just being sarcastic
no having a link on a wikipedia page or linking to wikipedia won’t get you banned.
I love the commenters here don’t get me wrong, but some of them…wheww.
Wow! I couldn’t stop laughing when I read those first few comments.
Till then,
Kurt
PS: Be sure to renew your domain name Eli, as I want to keep seeing this blog! It’s set to expire in January!
For a minute there I tought you were serious Mark. I’m glad it was just sarcasm.
I have a couple sites with outbound links to wikipedia but haven’t got banned. so i feel your thinking is wrong!
Is the ban you receive permanent or a sandbox type thing to give the editing process time to occur?
Nice article though, I definitely know what instance where I’ll give it a try!
“Is the ban you receive permanent or a sandbox type thing to give the editing process time to occur?”
i don’t understand why your site will get into sandbox or banned by getting a link from wikipedia. i had a website on “online university information” and got a couple of links from wikipedia for a short period of time. I experienced an increase in SERP during that period. but as my links were removed by editors later, i soon noticed a fall in my SERPS.
I’m assuming something is a little unclear here?
I see no reason why a site should be instantly banned from receiving a link from Wikipedia? If that was the case I’d be adding links from Wikipedia to all my competitors immediately.
this is what i have been trying to say in my previous comments. infact getting a link from wikipedia is very beneficial despite it being a no-follow.
It is known that spamming wikipedia will put your site in a blacklist which IS shared by Google. But dropping one link to your site on a half-relevant page is not going to do this as I’m sure many people try this daily.
But anyway, what the hell has that got to do with this article? He doesn’t reccommend dropping links to your site from wikipedia at all.
Bluehatseo.com has been on the wikipedia blacklist ever since my how to spam wikipedia series of posts.
Is there seriously a Wikipedia blacklist that is shared with Google? I’ve never heard of this.
James, you write that “It is known that spamming wikipedia will put your site in a blacklist . . . .” Can you site any authoritative source for this? I don’t believe this is true.
@Jane: Why would linking to wikipedia get your site banned? Ofcourse it doesn’t fool, millions of pages link to wikipedia daily.
Regarding #3:
How are you going to “remove nearly all those bitches!”
Am i missing something or what?
The suggestion you are referring to is to edit the Wikipedia pages and remove the links.
Yes you are.
Oh yeah!
I like deleting links to competitor sites and replacing them with my own.
I was looking for a #1 ranking where the current #1 was a subpage of a big and popular site. That particular subpage sucked, however, and had offensive and intrusive advertising, which was my entry point.
I did pretty much what you said to do, although I did it over the course of two weekends. I put in about 150 links to my site, and managed to replace maybe 60 or 70 links that pointed to my competitor.
Three months later I get the #1 spot, and a TBPR of 5. Not bad at all.
I LOVE IT. This strategy totally works. Thanks!
Are you saying your ranking improved by spamming Wikipedia with links to your site?
So apparently, adding links to Wikipedia didn’t get you banned. That would be ridiculous, as that would discourage ANY site from being in a Wikipedia entry. If no one wanted their site in a Wikipedia entry, Wikipedia would crash and burn, as they would no longer be seen as having thorough information as many of the links in Wikipedia are very relevant to the entry.
Angela from Aberdeen
Backlinks
“and managed to replace maybe 60 or 70 links that pointed to my competitor.”
but how on earth could you get those links to your commentator removed. it would be nice if you post the method of removing links!!!
Eli,
Could you expand on 4 a bit. Is matching all the links for Co Citation reasons?
Why doesn’t no-follow matter? (i know you said you didn’t want to get into it - but I’m asking nicely)
Someday I’ll make a whole post on nofollow, but for now the point wasn’t as mentioned, link building it was to get your link on the same pages as the wikilink.
nice. I look forward to it.
I have been waiting patiently for another Blue Hat gem, and alas, on my 27th birthday, I get one.
Thanks!
Hmm. Still kinda confused as to how you can justify to the “Wiki-police” that you’re deleting those internal links? From what I’ve seen (see the “Discussion” pages) most of them are pretty damn rabid about ANY changes being made to pages, even links being delinked etc… They’ll want a plausible explanation which might not be so easy to give.
Finally a great question!
I actually somehow forgot to put that into the post. It’s very vital that you put a reason for edit when you remove the see also’s. Put something like Reference didn’t match topic. Removed it or something that’ll convince the other editors that it was an edit related to relevancy. Kind of use your intuition when writing it. The better job you do the better chance you have of knocking more of those links out.
Simple solution: Use “Trim internal links to reduce overlinking. You can help, see [[WP:Overlinking]]” as the edit summary.
“I’ll take that one step further. Start by spamming the crap out of the
Wikipedia page in question with internal Wiki links — add links to as
many Wikipedia pages as quickly as you can, they should be barely relevant.
In my experience, adding a huge volume of internal links all at once can
trip a Google filter and make the page disappear from the SERP (at least
for a little while).
Then in a day or so you can go back (obviously from a different
IP/account) and remove all those links PLUS many of the original legit
links in the name of cleaning up after “the spammer”. Just make sure you
don’t look too obvious. ”
i found this on http://www.nabble.com/How-to-sabotage-Wikipedia,-for-SEO-spammers-td20702972.html
sorry, i didn’t see that this comment was infact first posted here below. so moderator plz remove my previous comment.
Interesting article Eli. I think point 4 about finding the blogs and forums that link to Wiki and dropping your own in there is the key point and also one of the main tecniques that can easily be used to out rank any competitor. Anyway, a great read as always.
Another great article.
For some inside info on Wikipedia, check out their recently released Annual report for 07 - 08. Actually some pretty interesting reading.
-Brad
Brad, what’s so interesting about it? Can you give us the bullet points?
I didn’t see anything in the Wikipedia Annual Report of interest to this topic but it does have some interesting information—facts you wouldn’t expect for Wikipedia. People can check it out here if they want: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_report
Yes, point 4 is interesting, but difficult. Point 2… it is very bad if anybody will erase info from wikipedia
As mentioned in the article and the other comment. Just give the other editors a good justified reason for making the edit. The reasons can be any or more of the reasons in step 2.
Cheers for the post Eli.
At the moment the only way I am trying to outrank my competitors is analysing their links and literally copying what they’re doing. I know they are just using blog posts and forums so I can easily just match.
I would really like a post on nofollow. Is it true that nofollow helps SERPs but not PR.
John
Hey Eli thanks for the helpful article, you make some great suggestions.
Wikipedia has got more information than required..
Hope to try that out soon.. otherwise usually my gets deleted.
i dont think that blogs in wikipedia get banned. In fact i see some blogs from the same niche as mine featured in Wikipedia and they stillperform better than me. as a matter of fact i was thinking “to open” a page over there…
Now I see why this blog is called “blue hat seo” and not “white hat seo.”
This is a good tip, especially when used in moderation and within the Wikipedia TOS (e.g. removing irrelevant links).
My bunny sense is tingling…
Thank you. I have announced this your post in russian forum of webmasters and SEOs.
Nice article.I guess I could apply these tips to outrank other high authority sites too.
I’m trying to think of sites that have a comparable link structure…
Great article. A little deceptive but I guess it is not all fun and games when it comes to generating traffic.
It’s not just “little deceptive”. It’s a real Blue Hat SEO (though some of the tips of this page I’d call black hat rather)
Fantastic tips, I too have run into this, time and again, will try your steps, thanks!
I’ll take that one step further. Start by spamming the crap out of the Wikipedia page in question with internal Wiki links — add links to as many Wikipedia pages as quickly as you can, they should be barely relevant.
In my experience, adding a huge volume of internal links all at once can trip a Google filter and make the page disappear from the SERP (at least for a little while).
Then in a day or so you can go back (obviously from a different IP/account) and remove all those links PLUS many of the original legit links in the name of cleaning up after “the spammer”. Just make sure you don’t look too obvious.
This accomplishes two things: 1) you might succeed in knocking the page off Google’s front page for appearing to have gained a spammy link profile and 2) it gives you a legit looking reason to remove existing links on powerful Wiki pages.
Genius!
Now that is a bluehat tip!
Good addition to the article Melanie, you think like a true “Blue hat’er”
Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about. I was reading down the comments, and for a minute I was thinking: “What the hell happened to the intelligence level of BlueHat readers?” but you get the award for the best (and smartest) comment. Thank you for the awesome tip.
Aww shucks. Thanks guys
Great tip Melanie! That’s the best comment so far. I’m going to try it today and see how it works.
personal checks
Some interesting tips there which even a dumbo like me might be able to have a dabble with. I’m a long-time reader and share your disdain of Wikipedia if not your skill in nobbling the damn moderators whose kingdom it is.
The link in my name above leads to a rant on the subject instigated by some fool deleting a whole article I’d written because he’d staked out a claim to that corner of Wikipedia. It has some funny pictures in it you can spam the mods back with (briefly, I suppose…) which you might find slightly amusing.
Anyway some insightful comments, very many thanks, I might actually try them, but I doubt the mods will let me get away with anything, tenacious sods…
Mhh, I like the print feature. Is that a plugin or just a css mod you did?
Very cool article….
I also use spyglass tool it also show backlinks like yahoo and pagerank, age and kind of value for each domain…
Ha ha this is great writing. I love it. And it is the right method to take, though I would build about 20% more links from the same blogs and forums and then build additional links through social media site submissions. :0
great- I had alreay figured out the last part and discovered that you don’t need to take many links from the wiki page for it to drop.
On a info site of mine they were stopping me - so I contact all the inbound links - about 200 - I got ten of them to switch there link from wiki to me and another 10 or so added my link - the wiki page is now in my mirror.
Never though of the internal stuff on wiki though - I can see this getting me into trouble…
Nice strategy - very simple and actionable. I’ll keep it in mind next time I’m trying to outrank Wiki.
Another great post Eli. I realize this is off the topic of this post, but have thought of talking about geo-targetting. IE, getting ranking in another country code. Google.ca or Uk
A good post. This is the first time I’ve stumbled across your blog and I have a feeling I’ll be up all night. It’s good to come across some advice that actually makes sense.
I avoid Wiki, but I’ll pass this on to my husband who has actually edited for fun and would know exactly how to word edits.
Nice article. A little deceptive but I guess it is not all fun and games when it comes to generating traffic.
It should be noted that if this method is used to improve the quality of Wikipedia entries, this method is entirely within the Wikipedia terms of service.
This is a brilliant and easy to understand article. You’re a genius when it comes to stuff like this!
Like Carrie above said, this is my first visit too, and I’m already in love with this blog!
I would however like to see the QUIT thing up again, as it seemed like a really awesome tool.
There is SQUIRT and QUIT is available for squirt members.
SUPER THANKS for this tip. I am one of those people who really don’t like Wiki in the first place. (Administrators need to take a class on how to socialize for starters) But the fact that they are beating me in rank for one of my sites was really getting to me.
Now that I can turn the tables a bit, you have made my day… Thanks again.
Oh man, this is going to be a LOT of fun.
Anybody know of any automated way to add links to a Wikipedia result?
I never realized that it could be quite simple really to dislodge Wiki from their seemingly unbudgable spot but now you explain this quite clearly i can seen that it is quite easily possible. Thanks for that.
It is confusing though, why so many of the commentators seem to think that dropping links to Wiki will get you banned. Why should it. Millions link to wiki everyday i would think?
You may be missing the point. The point is to remove links from Wikipedia pages that link to the page Wikipedia page that you are competing with. That way, you remove the “link juice” coming into the page you are competing with. Of course, this method does not address the links from other domains that link to the page you are competing with—there is nothing that can be done about those.
Thanks for that explanation.
Just as an FYI, search engines purposefully place Wikipedia results in almost ALL of their result sets for as many queries as they can. This is information from an insider. They are basically “rounding out” their pages with an obilgatory result from either about.com or wikipedia. And as the article states, the page may not be all that relevant.
So if you’ve ever wondered why this seems to happen as often as it does, that’s why.
Just sharing a little bit.
Thanks for sharing ‘insider information’
I actually believe in what you say. I do think wikipedia has been given a manual priority benefit by the google administrators.
Hmm, I never thought Wikipedia was any special.
Great stuff as always!
Is there an alternate route or tweak to help this work against an About.com or microsoft.com/smallbusiness article?
Thanks
I’m not aware of any. The problem with About.com and Microsoft.com is the content on their websites is entirely controlled by company editors—we can’t edit pages on About.com or Microsoft.com.
Your idea sounds interesting, but I wonder if the Wikipedia poiice would pay a blind eye to such changes made - especially when you make similar changes to many pages in Wikipedia.
Great post!
But I am VERY interested to find out if there are similar strategies to knock out About.com and RipOffReport.com pages. Both of those sites seem to get very special treatment from Google.
I would think that a similar strategy of duplicate and expand would be fairly effective. RoR/About/Wikipedia are just big sites with lots of internal juices to spread around.
Hi Eli,
Wikidnapping is where the idea was explained last year.
This was a theory I came up with last year. The reverse is also called Wikijacking. Rand Fishkin wrote an article about my theory last year also.
Wiki Bowling, lol. The opposite, the wiki whack, eg. beating out your competitors with wikipedia is also doable.
Oh yeah, Kris Kross forever, lol.
But if you are beating out your competitors with wiki whack, and they are competing with you, aren’t you using Wikipedia to beat yourself?
Another thing you could do is to deoptimize the offending wikipedia page, just be nice change a few lines without changing the meaning and add some more useful information (wikipedia is a coolproject
)
i dont think this is feasible because to overthrow a wikipedia page using you method would demand changing the specific wikipedia page TITLE which is not possible easily.
Nice solution……
This is so going to get widely used. Then Wikipedia finds out or some other way and does something. You really like to play with Wikipedia don’t you? Haha..
Im so happy to see your site, thanks for all the information you shared.
Fantastic tips,I enjoyed reading your post.
Thank you. I have announced this your post in philipphine forum,this is a nice forum.
Thats a great post and thanks for the information.
This blogs is really great! wish i can create same as your blogs.
Great, nice post keep up the good work.
Cyrus, why are you spamming this blog with your comments? Rather go comment on other articles if you just want to get on the tc list.
Great tactics. Its so obvious, yet so brilliant! Thanks again Eli.
That’s great information. Actually I also read the usefull information from
http://www.togaac.com/2008/11/25/trick-to-get-google-authority/
This is same as spying on competetors backlinks. According to me, nothing special is written in that article at togaac.com!
I would like to add, that another benefit of ranking wikipedia pages is that you can use them to get a link from a competitor entry to your website, without even pushing your own entry if you have one.
Wow, I never thought of that before. thanks Tech SEO.
The best SEO solution is to become Secretary of State. I’m sorry, I got caught on your first comparison.
It’s a brilliant idea, all is fair in love and war … and SEO, you’re actually doing the internet a favour by removing the garbage links, haha
Thank You for your great post and thanks for the information.
Too bad Wikipedia is so heavily monitored.
However, without Wikipedia being “heavily monitored,” it would be useless sight full of spam.
Im so happy to see your site, thanks for all the information you shared, please continue posting all the information you know.
This is one of the most informational blog I have come across so far.
True,this is a really cool site, more power and keep up the goo work.
This has to be one of the most useful piece of information that i’ve been read.
A great article!.. It describes the procedure in step by step, very nice. I think it will be most useful for all
That’s fabulously creative and I certainly hope your idea gets the full attention it deserves. May you live in interesting times.
Are you all ethically bankrupt? You are advocating being dishonest and manipulative and almost all of the responses are “How wonderful and clever!” I do not find this wonderful or clever; I find it reprehensible behavior, akin to scam artists.
To Tracy walker,
This is bluehat seo, and if you are not comfortable with it, then just move on to another blog on whitehat seo!
More and more bluehat goodness. keep it coming.
Thanks for the heads up. Just so you all know there have been a plethora of new bots and tools coded to pick up on this. If too many of the same link starts getting removed (no matter how gradually) we will find out about it. Try again maybe?
Thanks for this great post. I’ve ever hated it that wikipedia is always on top of the google search score. And all in all I don’t like wikipedia at all, okay there are sometimes useful articles but most of the informations you find there are really dump. So I’ve often tried to score upon wikipedia, but I didn’t find a way. So thankfully find your blog about this. Now I could try again, and this time I’ll win.
Hmm, I have tried this using proxy servers to mask my IP but haven’t had any success! Great idea though!
I tried to remove some internal wikipedia links with no success. too many watchdogs. was reverted after a very short time.
Most probably you didn’t put a “reason for edit”, so they were all restored back, or that you removed links which were apt to be linked from on those pages!
Try it with the attribut noindex, nofollow!
@LR
nofollow for wikipedia internal links?
i guess they just see that someone edited it and they go in defense mode.
Oh sorry Jan: I haven´t read your comment correctly!
Haha kinda sneaky but effective. Never would have thought of this, cool idea.
@ Jan: some important wikipedia pages can not be changed by one person. Every change has to be controlled and accepted by at least 2 other persons.
Innerlinking only works by pages that are not important.
@ Bluehatseo: I think those tipps can be a bit dangerous, don´t you think? It´s not a black hat seo tactic anymore but quite black hat to link the own site in wikis.
Hi I recently tried somthing like this with wikipedia I made a page for my company and put alot of good content on the page about outdoor toys which is the product that we sell and at the bottom I put a small link to us just saying this is our site wikipedia then contacted me saying I was advertising on there systems and straight after that our pges dropped off googles rankings where we were at that time in the top 3 for most searchs Do you think the wikipedia thing might be at all related to my site dropping in the rankings and have you got any ideas on how to get back up
Are you wondering whether your site was penalized by Google because you created a link to it from Wikipedia? If so, I doubt that is the reason Google penalized you.
As you may read in my previous comments, i don’t think that getting a link from wikipedia is harmful. infact its very beneficial and helps in increasing the SERPS of your site!
Very informative article. I’m trying to learn more about “bluehat”, if you will. Things that are not standard fare for white hat, but things that will not get you banned or labeled black hat. Thanks for the insightful thoughts.
Blue Hat SEO always has some gems. Sometimes I forget all about it and then when I come back there something new and valuable, unlike blogs that update frequently but never actually say anything.
Even if specific methods don’t work for you and/or are “shut down” I think the idea is to really get thinking about these tactics and come up with some strategies of your own. It’s not what you learn but what you do with it and not being told what to think but learn how to think for yourself and run with things.
The comments are also great just to see the various reactions.
It’s also interesting that I said 1+1=2 but I “didn’t pass math” lol. Maybe I entered that wrong.
nice post, very informative.
Yeah, I have tried to implement some of these tactics, but it’s too early to see what’s going to happen. Even if it doesn’t work it certainly has given me ideas to apply to other sites.
Just found this via google, been reading a few articles and really like your blog… The articles are pretty well written =P
Keep up the good work =P, I’ll try to keep checking back…
Great post, just loveit!
Good Post! I agree your post but i feel point 4 is difficult to understand for me.otherwise the story is excellent.I really love it.
Thank for your post
Nice post! and I do have a good time reading your article. Thanks a lot.
The RSS reader in My Yahoo thinks that your most recent post was “added one year ago”, more specifically the 16 Aug 2007 post named Updates Coming.
At least My Yahoo allows me to add the feed for your wild ‘n’ crazy blog, which is a courtesy it extends to only a select few… bugs? Nah…
You might wanna check this out; I can’t be the only one they’re picking on… can I?
Thank you very much for the heads up! Keep up the good work.
Well, I’ll like to say just one thing and that is, nevr mess up with good sites. You should always respect them and never try to do anything wrong with them
ha ha ha. I didn’t realize you could do this. Good to know.
After reading this post, I decided not to do it against wikipedia alone but to all of my competitors… I see new hope.. thanks a lot..
thanks for sharing
usefull info
very nice and informative site.. keep it up..
Very interesting read! Thanks so much!
Very useful information.
Thanks…
i consider wikipedia as a tough competition. They are domineering for some keywords
This idea/tip is very interesting
I am bit annoyed seeing the wikipedia page(s) above mine in Google SERPs.
And I think, that with Wikipedia it is not necessary to struggle - senselessly. It is easier to make the ideal site on the necessary theme and to put on him the link with Wikipedia
Wow tthanks very much I see why its called Blue Hat - now to go make it happen.
Well folks, what do you think? Where’s Eli? He’s either building some giant new scheme to conquer the interwebs, or he’s slumming it on his new island while meaninglessly large strings of zeroes pile up behind a nine in various bank accounts….
I’m calling it. There is no SEO Empire part 2, never was. It’s a myth. Or maybe he’s waiting for someone else to post it. Or maybe there is no “Eli”, never was… he’s a replicant, and this whole blog was created by a hyperintelligent AI content generator.
Eli? The entree is boiled dog.
“meaninglessly large strings of zeroes pile up behind a nine in various bank accounts….”
this is a very funny & intelligent expression of what Eli earns!
Awesome post I’ll have to try this.
I dont get this problem, but i enjoyed the read anyway.
Your posts are always detailed and helpful
Just what the Doctor orders for me. I have a headache with a wiki page in my niche. Guess I should not be worried about it after following the mentioned steps.
thanks for this article. its always good to get you perspective on how to do things. i had my own ideas on how to lower the wiki rankings
Although it is great from an SEO point of view, it is very tough to defeat wikipedia.
This is a really difficult feat to manage. I really love reading your posts, but I always find myself at the “damn if i perfected that, that’d be great” phase. Keep up the great posts!
Update: I actually just checked one of my websites, and saw that the Wiki result is lower. But it’s hard to determine causality when there are so many other variables to consider.
Thanks for the amusing “why didn’t I think of that” moment.
Interesting advise, I would not have thought to edit the Wiki article.
I love Wiki and its not difficult to add your article to it if its reliable!
Very helpful post, Thanks! I’ve encountered this problem in the past, but I didn’t attempt your suggestions, I just worked to build links for the site that I was trying to rank. I’m going to do what you’ve suggested next time I run into a Wiki page in my way!
I think we should all no-follow all Wikipedia links.
I agree. Why should Wikipedia - who blocks all link juice going out - get link juice going back in to them? They’re already a great resource that millions of people go to for all sorts of knowledge, so why should they get the top 1-2 results for half the Google searches out there?
FYI: all external wikipedia links are now no-follow.
great advice, i’m gonna try it out.
point 2 and 4 is interesting, But I do not fully agree with this.
My blog is not very old yet i have already run into this problem. To be honest i was just going to give up on the keyword because i thought i had no chance of out placing a wikipedia result. This however is something i will try because if it works the rewards of all the potential extra visitors could be massive.
Thank you. Will check out other blog posts for more info.
Hey,i havent faced these type of probs in my career, but if it happens, then i will surely follow this tactic, thanks.
Just checked your print feature. works great!
Thanks for the post! It is very helpful!
What a nice advice. I will surely try it.
I’m going to do what you’ve suggested next time. Hope it works. Thanks.
Fantastic post. We have so many products that could be considered ‘generic’ so often Wikipedia does dominate our native listings.
Great print feature by the way.
…Thats an interesting technique. What ip switching software do you use?
I guess i have to give this technique a test and see if it works for me. Thanx
Definitely worth a try. Thanks.
Awesome post good work! This is worth trying!
Thank for advice. It is definitely wort to try. I am getting on to it.
Till
its reall blue hat seo
Here is the 161st comment in this post; to wish you a very happy and successful new year.
Hi friends, nice to meet you. Thank for your sharing article.
Metaspring, now 163. But the quantity does not mean quality
Yes quantity does not mean quality but when there is such an overwhelming response it does have to count for something!
@Metaspring, I agree with you. Quantity does not mean quality but it is some kind of measure.
Happy new year to you too.
Precisely, there is a very great deal of appreciation for an original and creative tactic here.
Amazing, I wonder how effective Wikipedia really is if this is how simple it is to enter anything you want.
Great advicce. I have been sat around 6th for a particular search term for a long time now and am hoping my renewed link building campaign is going to create a chance to leapfrog my competition into the top 3.
I think this tactic is probably dark blue hat, but given my priority is to be above wiki then i will definitely give it a go.
Simplicity and great effectiveness of it are evidently seen.
Eli my men, where are you? I’m so waiting for another post from you. SEO Empire Part 2, pretty please?
Wiki = nofollow
Its often that Wikipedia is the highest ranking page, actually to often if you ask me.
I would really enjoy if google would pay less attention to sites lik wikipedia.
very interesting
Hi there,
Does anyone have any befor and after examples?
Or has anyone done this yest?
Cheers
D
I also use link dignosis to find good links at wikipedia
I use linkdiagnosis tool from fire fox…
Can’t dropping a link to a wikipedia page get you black listed and maybe even put you into a Google penalty? I’m not sure about this.
I hear the same thing with regards to getting blacklisted.
yes,So do I .But I am not sure it is really true.
Very amusing article, I enjoyed the read!
I have actually been following this advice and I have seen some nice results. I am wondering when Eli is going to give out the secret about overthrowing a .gov or .edu ranking
Its good to read them. To my knowledge, I think “Link Diagnosis” is the best tool which comes with Firefox.
- Dave.
Your article is really worth to read. I Found your sites very interesting!
Hello, we have a project in Germany with the keyword LR. We have tried everything possible to be better than wikipedia. Nothing has helped until now! I´ll try your tipps!
Thanks so much for the advices that I found here. keep it up.
As long as you can stand the pain of feeling evil =D
WOW that a big statement to make. Wikipedia is one of the most authortiy websites on the internet. It could be possible to overturn the results but very hard.
Yet another awesome SEO technique. Thanks for this, I just might use it
Andy
Wikipedia links are nofollow ! I do not see the logic in removing the links from wikipedia.
Make no sense at all. And it’s not ethical either.
All links to internal pages in wikipedia is dofollow. only external links get a nofollow.
I find that you can easily rank above Wiki by just building a reasonable amount of links to your site. Up until now I never had a problem.
It’s always pissed my off that the wiki pages did so well. Yours is an interesting take on how to take care of that issue.
I get the impression that these folks at wiki act like many at dmoz.
More and more bluehat goodness. keep it coming.
The information in your blog is very interesting and excellent. Thankyou for providing valuable information.
Thanks a lot for the cool information that I found here. It helps me a lot.
Im just having trouble outranking smaller sites right now, let alone the bigger sites with lots of PR and authority. It is really hard. thanks for the info!
thank you for sharing these tips with us. I haven’t been using wikipedia much lately, it makes me wonder if I’ve slowed down on my researching??? Hmmm….
Well, another thing I am curious about though regarding wikipedia is, did they finally reach their target of donations? I’ll go check it out don’t worry.
I wonder how many of commentators read actual post.
Wiki - huge site but how much can you believe is fact anyway?
Does anyone know anybody who has actually donated to Wiki??? Is anybody out there………..
If you do your basic SEO you can probably outrank Wiki 90 times out of a 100.
Did anyone have success by this?
I had. Try it and you´ll see!
Interesting concept, but doesn’t Wikipedia nofollow their links?
I pretty confused with this concept. Some people say posting on wikipedia is really good thing to do. It will increase your traffic, but I think wikipedia is nofollow website. any successor yet.
haha i really like the idea. F’in Wikis are always beating me in the serps and now its time for them to pay for it.
it s a very nice place
Another good one article..thanks for posted here.
Really informative as always Eli. Still waiting on SEO Empire Part 2
what a impressive article. last days I didn’ t read post like that. I am now your blog’ s follower thanks for this useful blog. you are now in my bookmarks.
So is this site dead or what? I’m thinking of dropping it from my RSS reader. What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s a-happenin…
Great post, I am going to have to try it out now. I get so frustrated when Wiki ranks higher than my post.
This is the article that I want. This article is very good. This article is very useful for me. Thanks
Great old post, what’s happening with more recent posts, all seems a bit quiet on the site?
Thank you very much for sharing a very interesting concept. Keep up the good work.
Great post, I am going to have to try it out now.
Modifying wikipedia is always a bit of a gamble as depending of the subject there are crazy zealots that would remove even really useful linka.
“Modifying wikipedia is always a bit of a gamble as depending of the subject there are crazy zealots that would remove even really useful linka. ”
I believe this to be the practical truth Joe!
A Great tatics, it is of utmost importance for the seo.
Great article and great idea thanks for sharing
Eli, great concept! I’ll try that to improve my rankings.
Realy its good way of getting high renk but we should also consider the objectve of Wikipedia as it is not a profit making organization but if we try not to make profit then it would be very dificult for us as some of us have choosen it as a career.
Anyhow, we should follow the simplycity as the Wikipedea follows and we should try not to advertise much on our website.
Thank you! my parents have this site “www.maisonporcelaine.com” and sell therefore porcelain. On the french google, they are alywas ranked second. I ll work on it for them! i ll let you know,
Thankyou very much, olivia
Hahaha, I like the style of writing here. No bullshit. Good hints.
This is some good advice. The SERP pages are being squeezed more and more with properties like Wiki, Squidoo, Hub pages etc ..
Thanks for this nice advice..i wanna try this hint to “fight” in “kampanye damai pemilu indonesia 2009″
Great advice thanks, although is number 2 really that different to number 1?
I think it’s almost the same.
Thank you so much for the pieces of advices. Keep posting!
Great advices! thanks a lot for sharing!
thanks. this is important things.
This article is like a mine giving gold for free, I mean you give away all that cool SEO advise for free. Hats off man!!
That needs a bit of work but will pay off really well.
I just wanted to say that you are a total douche nozzle. Your science is flawed! half the twisted shit you try to pull off as SEO doesn’t even fucking work!
nah… I’m just kidding
You are a fucking GENIUS and an inspiration dude…for real
I am exactly the same opinion. It´s really a pity that he doesn´t write anymore in the blog.
Love the comments on here, although I didn’t see an answer to the question about whether there’s any point in knocking out links in wikipedia if they are nofollow anyway?
Why have you stopped writing in you blog? You are one the most popular SEO Blog in the world. I find it´s a pity!
The amount of work being done lately eats up alot of time. I’ll have to get eli a bottle of sailor jerrys and have him finish up a post. =)
Thank you for the tip, was completely of my opinion.
This in unethical.
However the competitor is probably loading his links into wikipedia 1 day at a time and so . . . .
Would be espacially useful if you had a site on page 2 and this method got you onto page 1
In fact your article and opinions are very right. But in the reality it´s more than difficult to succeed in overthrowing a wiki result.
I think Wikipedia has such a trust level that it´s quite impossible for a commercial website to top it!
Nice information mate, thank you for sharing.
True i agree with you, great info.
Nice article.
A good information, maybe possible for some nisches keywords.
I try to overthrow Zürich (switzerland´s capital) with my website
It´s almost impossible!
great advice, i think il look into this 2morrow. one of my niche competitors is referenced on that damn site
great tactic, thanks for sharing!
is this method still working. I’ve tried it a couple of times now with no success.
Guys - No joke!
Actually wikepedia itself gets banned every single time it links to anything internal as well as external! Last time I linked to them also all of my competitors websites were immediately promoted to No1 positions on Google and Yahoo! for all their top key-words.
Something really dodgy is going on with that domain!!!
How’s that help to overtake the Wikipedia SEO?
When typing SEO in Google?
That’s awesome.
I have had this problem in the past and just found that consistent link building beat it eventually…. But not in 3 days.
I have also never edited a wikipedia page but should start doing that.
I do think that (theoretically) the internal linking done in Wikipedia become the major contributions to its ranking in SERP, plus its domain’s age. These 2 factors is what we always called “domain authority” factor.
Nice SEO trick to know, unethical, but nice
I guess we will shortly see the complete rejection of wikipedia as this kind of damage begins to take its toll on the integrity of the site.
It is a pity really.
Dennis Foreman
Nice SEO trick to know, unethical, but nice
I guess we will shortly see the complete rejection of wikipedia as this kind of damage begins to take its toll on the integrity of the site.
It is a pity really.
Dennis Foreman
Best idea! good Seo trick !
lol.. wicked stuff
Wiki Bowling, lol.
This is seriously of great help! Why didn’t I thought of them in the beggining? I am wondering, are these what you have thought or you consolidate from elsewhere?Great one!
Great article, hard to though. Dy the way, Eli, when will you post something new for us?))
I guess a lot of people will face this problem. Thanks for the useful solution.
Verny nice and useful. Thanks for that
It all depends what you are searching for. Last year our Web Design site went above Wikipedia for a short term for the keyword ‘web design’, which we were absolutely fanatic about. But then it dropped. It does need a lot of search engine optimisation work to get it there, an even more seo to keep it there!
Very good post, thanks.
Well I don´t think it´s possible to overthrow a wikipedia result.
IT is possible to overthrow a wikipedia result with enough hard work. It has been done many times before.
I can see that this technique will totally work. Wikipedia is often a trouble for people optimizing celebrity fan sites.
I am not entirely sure about removing the links from wikipedia pages, what if just the anchor text is change to include ‘Wikipedia Entry for so-and-so-topic’?
I never thought that it will be possible to overthrow such “giant foe” on search engines. it seems impossible but I will try your suggestion and get back here if what will be the result. But I guess I will really gone to a “tons of pain” before I could really overthrown one.
How many of you have overthrown Wikipedia for your results? I’m interested to know how effective this is….
Very creative technique, Eli. One thing to keep in mind also are pages from other language sources. Target that too.
Awesome idea! Takes a lot of work and patience though. One page I’d like to beat has over 500 links from other wikipedia pages. Could take me a while..
Hey
it’s quite interesting one once i saw the title, And you have given an awesome tips inside it, Such a pleasure to read this blog.
Thanks a lot mate, I really wanna try this out, If i meet any problem or doubts, I’ll let you know here mate.
Thanks
Great article. That is a great idea. I tried that and it helped me a lot on my drug rehab sites. Thanks a lot.
nice posting,very resourceful.Thank you for shearing
interesting !
Thank You For Amazing Information
I Stumbled
Nice post, but shouldn’t bash on newbies asking questions in comments.
Man, this is golden, you should be selling this info!
Thanks
Cool! I love this. This post caught my attention because those “wiki” pests rank above me in just about every keyword. I will try to fix this!
Hey man, Thanks for giving this for free, as free webmaster SEO tools said, you have to sell this useful information.
lol
So that it takes some attention of the people
awesome information; a good read
Thank you for your sharing.
nice post, very informative.
It isn’t too hard to get above Wikipedia, our website has been above it for the term ‘web design’. As you say it does require a lot of work externally, but i would be careful about getting too many links from Wikepedia. It is highly thought of, but i don’t think it is always necessary for good Search Engine Optimisation.
This will come handy in a few niches heh heh
tnx! Very good post!
I am in the process of trying this and so far nothing happening. Will keep you updated!
Its really great post to read , Nice one for seo
dude, you are good. never thought of that but the method is great. I just hope wikipedia won’t ban too fast for this one.
Interesting article and weird also, anyway nice to drop in and looking forward to hear your new post.Cheers
Great article… hopefully will help me with a problem I am having at the moment.
good post
good post
The “What links here” link at the side of the Wikipedia article lists all of the links from other Wikipedia articles, so it’s better than Yahoo Site Explorer in that respect.
Few of my sites have problems with wikipedia articles though.
I learn new insight when I read your article.
I love it and I will come often for more.
Thanks
Info Ibu
Is it really okay to remove links from a wiki just for SEO purposes? Maybe I sound polyanna here, but that doesn’t seem okay to me…
Also - What’s with all the spam comments here?
Very good post specially for newbie
thanks for writing this
Great post. It never ceases to amaze me how technical seo can be. Great advice
I agree. It’s amazing how technical SEO can be. SEO has become a careful science.
Great I didnt think that you could get over this problem
excellent article. This could be considered sabotage and it’s scary thought that someone could be doing to your pages also!
Hey Eli!!
will you ever write a new post here… kindly let us know.
Is there any other place on www where you are blogging or answering forums aor somethin else..
waiting eagerly for your response..
Sanchi
This post complements what you said at another… I think using both ideas are very good… in one way, you may be have new links from Wikipedia to your pages, but also, why not get some at second level?
You explain this quite clearly quite easily possible, It is confusing though, So many of the commentators dropping links to Wiki, That way, you remove the link juice coming into the page you are competing with
Haha, pretty sneaky but I love your thinking! Please post more often!!
Sneaky tactic, but i would love to know how many hours it took to delete many of its back links from other wiki entries?
I can’t comment with url, Any suggestions??
It’s possible to rank better than Wikipedia, but it’s very difficult too for the reasons you mentioned above. If you just follow their links and do same it won’t be enough, be imaginative and do better
I have just come across this post and have been having the same problem for one of my keywords. I’m going to give your advice a try and post my results in a week.
Why should I overthrow a wiki result? I mean at least 90% people know that wikipedia is no commercial result. In that case I see no concurrence and no need to lose my precious time in optimization.
This is a problem a lot of SEO consultants come up against i’m guessing. Any ideas are good ones to achieve a goal.
I gotta give this a try for sure, although the one wikipage that I am trying to over throw the guys handling it seem to be really really attentive to detail, hehe. But its a learn experience I suppose!
I actually am interested to know how to get links from Wikipedia. Even if I have placed informative content on the page, Wikipedia does not appear to accept it, because it is a commercial website at last..
I guess Google will never let a site ranking better than Wikipedia but you should remove the link juice coming into the page you are competing with, it seemed like a really awesome tool.
I thought it was the other way around. Great post, thanks.
oh man, you’re a genius…but i’m too scared to do that…
Those were some good tips that I think I could add to my link building arsenal
I wonder how come those ideas come to your mind!!
The singular and plural keyword targeting was a major area I was having problem with but your post clearly explains how to do the right kind of optimization.
Ahhhhhh. Got it! I, too, was having problems with the singular and plural as well. Thank you!
Nice tips. I will go to this one by one I was doing some experiments on my end to topple wiki. Good thing I read your article. 2 thumbs up to you.
All the tips which you have given are very usefull for me.
That’s just nasty! Thanks for the tips.
Wonderful article , thanks ! tips great , very help me !
Interesting concept. I have found the “wiki patrol” is active in some areas and asleep at the wheel in other places.
It has been interesting to read the discussion and various ideas.
Granite Headstones
Thanks for all the tips, this is a great article, I enjoyed reading and learned a lot from it!
I want to learn more about wikipedia’s way of the inner linking.
Great tutorial
often just making the internal link juice a little less helps a much in ass kicking Wikipedia 
.
We have tried to get a better place than wikipedia and were successfull, unfortunately only for 3 weeks. Now we are at least 3 positions under wiki.
Luckily we don’t have to contend with wikipedia for any keywords we are targeting, but if the menace starts showing up, will use some of the ideas to knock ‘em out!
I know this is old, but that was an awesome post. It’s just got so many good in it.
Oh, and your writing style is great.
Sorry for “bumping” the thread. Just wanted to say thank you for some awesomeness
More goodies plz!!
I didn’t know that there’s a way to throw off wiki… thanks for sharing.
This is is brilliant, can’t believe I didn’t think about this in the past. It makes sense that if you take away all of the interlinking from irrelevant pages and match links on blogs and forums pointing back that it will potentially push your link up in the results above the Wiki result. Obviously it isn’t a guarantee, but it’s a way to combat the obvious domination of Wiki in the Google results. Nice gem!
I find that you can easily rank above Wiki by just building a reasonable amount of links to your site. Up until now I never had a problem.
“I find that you can easily rank above Wiki by just building a reasonable amount of links to your site. Up until now I never had a problem. ”
Well sure you can. You can rank above anyone if you just build a “reasonable” amount of backlinks.
I have tried Your method but wikipedia is still TOP1
i will try
This is almost war methods you are suggesting
I guess a lot off editors from wiki dont like this. You must be sure not to remove links that really need to be there. Else they will just put them back.
I am behind wiki and It doesn’t seem to bother me. People read up on it, and go the next result. Wiki is great but people want more content that is original, everyone has seen a wiki page.
Surveys4checks
I’m fighting with wikipedi for a lot of word.but it’s hard.that wikipedia son of the google.
Thanks for the Wikipedia tip. Real useful for my linking structure.
At present the only way I am trying to outrank my competitors is analysing their links, is that a good way ?
As per my experience, you cannot beat an existing website by just analysing their links. Because there are certain factors such as domain age which is highly unmodifiable. So the best approach would be to build multiple long tail websites and try to rank them rather than just trying all your SEO efforts on one site only.
How come addding links to wikipedia not get you baned. I dont beleive that.
I think content will always be king. Much easier to rank for too!
Those first few comments were surely pretty scary, I thought id have to redo all my seo.
I hope your idea will work but there is always danger of being penalized by Google.
So far I feel that this is one of the best posts by Eli.
BTW I enjoyed reading the whole post, as well as replying to other’s comments.
Interesting advise - But external wikipedia links are now no-follow right??
Wikipedia external links ARE no-follow.
I think its not a big deal, you can easly get rid of it
is this work? did someone had try his bluehat strategy?
But i like this tips, i would try
Nice Info
Thanks
It´s a good artcle, but not really realisable. Especially because Google is now coming with its own info service.
The Wikipedia technique actually works. Althought its very likely to be more complicated in my opinion. But never the less they technique works.
Frederik
To my opinion, I don’t think we should spam websites such as Wikipedia. I think those websites should remain as close as possible to an educational reference… It would be sad to see it filled with junk, don’t you think?
I wasnt aware this was even possible, Does this still work do yuo know or have they wised up?
Wikipedia doesn’t really have much of a way to combat this as that is kind of the whole point of the website. Good idea!
I never thought about using Wiki articles in this way. I don’t think I will ever try fighting for a keyword as sought after as Clinton, but this technique might come in handy sometime.
Jeeze - great article. I must admit, I do like the comical was it is written too - very refreshing.
nice article
gold secrets
Ok , I read this article now three times and i enjoyed it each time and got something new i think i need to read it more and put it in practise ..let us see
1st read - fell of my chair
2nd read - laughing alot
3rd read - now it makes sense
Wow this post is old but people are still responding. I dind’t go through all the comments but has anybody experienced somebody adding the references you’ve deleted? Also what kind of reason should you be using to allow for the removal of those bitches?” title=”Long Island Basements”>
I really love this dinosaur.
Really nice article, I didn’t know about this but it is a great idea to increase the visit of your internet webpage.
I will try today and I gonna see. Hope that it will work for me too…
Thank for advice. This could be worth trying…
Eliminating links from a wiki article would be way too hard to do without being caught. What good reasons can you possibly have to remove a valid reference?
Looks like alot of work. Might be worth the effort.
Man wiki is the final frontier. If one can really do that then you are in the captain seat
Wikipedia is such a dinosaur… it’s great when you finally overthrow a result!
Looks like a lot of work maybe I will give it a try for my weight loss blog
I read this article now couple times, really good info thanks
now that’s something smart. I’m sure to give it a try to try n get better than Wikipedia.. Here i cm!
It’s not that easy as it sounds but for sure it can be done with the right amount of backlinks and correct ancor test. But maintaining it is another story.
I wonder why some sites of mine actually outrank wikipedia….you CAN outrank WP in some cases. Just be confident and spam blogs with li..uhm i man work on your backlinks
This is almost war methods you are suggesting