Would you invest your time in a .org or find a good .com?

I sincerely believe there's a specific bias with Wikipedia. Ranking in the top 5 for just about everything just doesn't seem possible without a little help.

 

Why not? People link to Wikipedia almost every where, so that's where their help is coming from. They have content unique to their site. They to internal link building, and there are no dofollow outgoing links. They are well known, so they have great type in traffic and direct traffic from search engines. They are the epitome of great SEO and internet marketing.

 

I highly doubt Wikipedia got to the top of the listings without a bias. People link into WIkipedia because they're so high in the SERPs. I seem to recall around '07-'08 one of the top Google bloggers posted about Wikipedia being a definitive source for information. How many sites scrape Wikipedia? I remember times when splog scrapers out ranked me for my own original content! You gotta remember I've been at this SEO and webmaster stuff for a while man.

Don't get me wrong I love Wikipedia and probably traffic it more than some of my own sites but Wikipedia didn't attain that top 5 rank organically.

 

Wikipedia's best asset is their large internal linking. There are hundreds of links on medium sized pages, but they are all internal dofollow, or external nofollow. Essentially, Wikipedia can rank well for any key word so long as there is a link connection between their best pages and their worst pages.

I do see your point though. But even during their initial years, how many sites do you know of which have more than 100k pages of content, during a period when that many pages per site would be incomprehensible?

 

That's the key though. The bias was all the links they were obtaining from other sites. And internet linking because if you look at some of their pages, its also linking to the other links. And plus, a lot of sites on the web always link to Wikipedia - whether those links contain anchor links or not, they're still getting links, and with that in mind; the more links you have, the higher you'll rank, right? And plus, they're full of unique content, and I'm sure there's a lot of sites out there that copied Wikipedia's content, but with the Panda update - didn't a lot of these sites go downhill and Wikipedia rose back up in the content area?

@David You're right. I don't think there's any other sites with 100k pages of content. The only sites I can think of with this huge amount of content would be twitter and/or Facebook.

 

To be fair, .net is a gTLD. The .org domains rank lower because what it's designed to be. org is short for "Organization." The only time that an .org domain is ideal is because the other Top Level domain names are taken. If you can buy a .com, do it.

 

Search engines don't discriminate .com/.net/.org in any way. All about the content and how many people link into you from other high ranking pages.

 

Sure, a .net is a gTLD, I didn't say otherwise. You should probably read it again and what it was in reply to. Another member made the point that keywords in a domain and a .com will give you greater priority over other domains when it comes to search engines. I showed one classic example for the key phrase: Programming Help. Dreamincode.net is a .net and doesn't have either keyword in it. ProgrammingHelp.com has both the key phrase and a .com, but Dreamincode.net ranks higher. Like I said, clearly the .com or the key phrase in ProgrammingHelp.com wasn't given priority over Dreamincode.net, so to say "domains are a big factor" is fallacious and incorrect.

.org doesn't rank lower because it originally stood for "organisation". Wikipedia is a good example. Search engines do not discriminate based on extension. Content is king, after Panda, Google stressed this point again.

 

I understand that you meant it towards to other member. But even with the proof, I disagree with it because the .net address has a lot of weight, just as much weight as the .com - I have seen a lot of .net websites prosper regardless of the domain name. I then made up (don't twist my words here) my mind that .net has just as much weight as the .com by itself.

Now, if your on-site SEO says "ProgrammingHelp" then your ranking weight changes very fast, since .net is seen as gTLD. If you put two and two together, you make a killer combination. That's why your example got the results it got.

Which brings me to the next point:

Wikipedia isn't really a niche by itself, like "programming help" is. Wiki is "quick" in Hawaii, pedia is obviously derived from "encyclopedia." It was on .org, but I don't think it got to where it is now without either confusion or it got there with ease, like your post implies. MW3Blog got 100,000 views, and recently reached 100,000 uniques in less than 9 months on the market. I don't know about you, but to me, that's "easy." A blog is very hard to attract that many visitors in less than 9 months.

Now, let's get back to the wikipedia, it was launched in 2001 and it wasn't popular until a few years later. It did not get the same amount of media attention that it has been getting prior to 2005. It was met with a lot of criticism such as the bias mentioned earlier, where people shun wikipedia as a source. It was at that time in 2006, when Time published an article about people collaborating together to bring about information just about anything. In 2007, Wikipedia exploded.

And let's not forget about the .com redirecting to .org. Let me point out that in 2002, and I quote Wikipedia's own entry: "Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and its website was moved to wikipedia.org."

Wikipedia doesn't even have any keywords in the meta description... Nothing. So, wikipedia relies heavily on it's on-page practices. Oh, and uh, capital - ahem, money.

I didn't know about they had .com - I assumed that the reason their domain is .org is because of some kind of problem with acquiring the .com or just that wikipedia had an idea of launching a network, or something. I don't know. I always thought it was odd that they are using .org as the main domain.

Let me put it this way, Wikipedia wouldn't be as popular it is now if wikipedia started as an org. That is FACT.