The power of Semantic MediaWiki?, Centiare experiments Options

[thekohser]

I hope it's not an intrusion (actually, I know it's an intrusion), but I noticed another comment made that SEO and SEM marketing types are one day bound to discover Centiare.com as a Wikipedia alternative for self-promotion.

I just wanted to cite a recent example of something I experimented with. Just a few weeks ago, I created a Centiare directory page about a behind-the-scenes producer of the video blog Rocketboom. Her name is Ellie Rountree. She doesn't have a ton of Internet exposure at this time, but there was substantial enough material about her (and generated by her on Flickr and MySpace) to build a short biography. This is her page on Centiare.

Now, remember, this page is only a few weeks old.

At this time, if we search for the words Ellie Rountree (not even in quotation marks), these are the results you get...

On Google (#2 out of 14,400)

On Yahoo! (#1 out of 1,720)

and, on MSN Search (#1 out of 8,650)

Centiare is only garnering a Google PageRank of 4/10, and we get maybe 150 unique visitors per day, so it is by no means capturing the hearts and minds of these search engines on the basis of popularity or any undue marketing efforts of my own. So, how do we explain the amazing results for this page about Ellie Rountree? My thought is that the search engines give high priority to MediaWiki software. Furthermore, I suspect that they give even higher priority to Semantic MediaWiki software and tags. From a privacy advocate's standpoint, this would be frightening. From the standpoint of being a stakeholder in Centiare, though, the prospect is exhilarating.

Anyone have any ideas that would explain this kind of search optimization? Granted, "Ellie Rountree" is not as competitive a search term as "low mortgage rates" or "asbestos lawyer", but clearly, there are enough memes about her on the Internet to make this a fair test case, right?

Greg

[Jonny Cache]

I hope it's not an intrusion (actually, I know it's an intrusion), but I noticed another comment made that SEO and SEM marketing types are one day bound to discover Centiare.com as a Wikipedia alternative for self-promotion.

I just wanted to cite a recent example of something I experimented with. Just a few weeks ago, I created a Centiare directory page about a behind-the-scenes producer of the video blog Rocketboom. Her name is Ellie Rountree. She doesn't have a ton of Internet exposure at this time, but there was substantial enough material about her (and generated by her on Flickr and MySpace) to build a short biography. This is her page on Centiare.

Now, remember, this page is only a few weeks old.

At this time, if we search for the words Ellie Rountree (not even in quotation marks), these are the results you get …

On Google (#2 out of 14,400)

On Yahoo! (#1 out of 1,720)

and, on MSN Search (#1 out of 8,650)

Centiare is only garnering a Google PageRank of 4/10, and we get maybe 150 unique visitors per day, so it is by no means capturing the hearts and minds of these search engines on the basis of popularity or any undue marketing efforts of my own. So, how do we explain the amazing results for this page about Ellie Rountree? My thought is that the search engines give high priority to MediaWiki software. Furthermore, I suspect that they give even higher priority to Semantic MediaWiki software and tags. From a privacy advocate's standpoint, this would be frightening. From the standpoint of being a stakeholder in Centiare, though, the prospect is exhilarating.

Anyone have any ideas that would explain this kind of search optimization? Granted, "Ellie Rountree" is not as competitive a search term as "low mortgage rates" or "asbestos lawyer", but clearly, there are enough memes about her on the Internet to make this a fair test case, right?

Greg

Greg,

I was active on the Internet for about 6 years before I fell down the WP:RABIDHOLE, posting tons and tonnes of pages in ≥50 different email lists and other fora. In those days, before Google's recent revamping of how it indexes web pages, an exact phrase Google search on my name would give upwards of 200,000 hits, with the list archives of the lists where I wrote the most coming out naturally on top. But 10 months working in Wikipedia, where my name got recorded only outside the main space, except for a few mentions in references, and my Admin Vandalized User Page magically rose to the top of the heap.

Why that is exactly may take a Congressional Investigation to find out, but while we all hold our breaths (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon7.gif) waiting for that at least the small amount of work that I created or recreated at Centiare has been able to rise to second place.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: