Wikipedia gets a lot of attention. From users of the internet scowering its pages and absorbing the content as if it were a credible encyclopedia, to the search engine spiders coming across so many wikipedia entries because of the sites huge amount of links, Wikipedia comes up a lot in regards to the web. Its popularity makes sense in that Wikipedia has much to offer in both its appeal to users and to search engines, but should this site be so overwhelmingly favored by search engines considering what else out there on the web that Wikipedia greatly overshadows.

Because Wikipedia is a user updated, and the content user's ad is virtually all text, Wikipedia has grown into the 13th most popular website in the world. A bulk of the added content includes links to outside websites, and because of the amount added, Wikipedia is considered one of the heaviest site in terms of links. A search engine like Google gives rank to sites that have the greatest link weight, this considered, it's no surprise that Wikipedia gets 70 percent of all its traffic only from search engines. In many regards, Wikipedia is, by nature, one of best optimized sites to get traffic organically from search engines.

So naturally, Wikipedia will come up ranked usually within the first couple of pages for any topic included, if not as one of the first few results, but does this page deserve such a high rank considering the pages content? Wikipedia is a site that relies on the "wisdom of the crowds", and is an open forum where anyone can post any content on any topic. The content will get edited if its disputable, but because anyone can add content, its credibility comes into question. Just because the site is used widely and is immense, does not mean that the content is well informed, well written, or even necessarily true.

If you ask me, the fact that there is no amount of credible authority in most Wikipedia's pages is valid criticism, but it isn't doing the site justice for how great of a web resource the site has become. There is something truly valuable about a public forum where any one can voice their account. I would actually rather trust a group individuals who constantly evaluate one another rather than one appointed authority. Doesn't this sound more democratic anyways? Nowadays, I often find myself doing web searches just so I can find a wikipedia page and this is because the write ups are usually pretty damn well written and informative. Even though these are 'everday' people writing here, it seems that the quality of writing is usually above par.

I think because Wikipedia has become a valuable site to people, where for the most part people care about what they write about it really deserves all the attention it gets.