did google lower wikipedia rankings to favor google?

BY ERIC ENGE ❖ STONETEMPLE.COM

July 2015

Wikipedia reportstraffic loss fromGoogle search.

OUR QUESTIONS:1. How often does wikipedia appear on Google

page 1 and at what positions?2. Does Wikipedia still do well in Google serps?3. For what types of queries does wikipedia

perform Best?4. Does Google favor its own properties over

wikipedia?

DATA SETS• Moz: 165K commercial queries• Stone Temple:182K info queries (sampled in

April, Mayand August)

1. WIKIPEDIA PERFORMANCEIN GOOGLE SERPS

Note that it appears Wikipedia shows more for commercial

than info queries

2. HOW MANY QUERIESSHOW WIKIPEDIA IN

GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS?

3. HOW HIGH DO WIKIPEDIAPAGES RANK ON GOOGLE?

Note gap at positions1 and 2between April & August data.

That's when wikipedia’sGoogle traffic fell.

4. HOW DID GOOGLE URLS DOIN COMPARISON TO

WIKIPEDIA?

Google properties do wellin our query sets,

but not quite as wellas wikipedia,even now

Note that Google does betterwith info queries than

commercial, the opposite of Wikipedia

5. HOW DO DIFFERENT GOOGLEPROPERTIES PERFORM

IN THE SERPS?

SUMMARY• Wikipedia did slip some in rankings• Wikipedia performs better for commercial

than info queries• Wikipedia shows for more queries than do

google properties• Google properties perform better for info

than commercial queries

A prominent SEO and digital marketing industry thought leader, Eric has been an entrepreneur for most of his 30+ year career. He is the lead author of the book The Art of SEO; a columnist and contributor to publications such as Search Engine Land, Moz, Forbes, Copyblogger, Marketing Land, and Social Media Today; and a regular speaker at industry conferences such as Search Marketing Expo, Pubcon, ClickZ Live, and many others. Eric is known for the publication of groundbreaking studies, and interviews of other industry notables such as Google’s Gary Illyes, Matt Cutts, and Bing’s Duane Forrester.