[zone411]

Wikipedia's top rankings are actually a big problem. I know of a site that was the first to put up high-quality reference-type content on the Web and for a while getting reasonable traffic from Google. Wikipedia's editors copied that content into thousands of articles in various ways. Thousands with attribution or copying just the facts and thousands without and copying more than just the facts.

This original site is now getting so little traffic from Google that more people visit it from the trickle of these bottom-of-the-page Wikipedia links than from Google itself. Its traffic was also badly hurt by Google's Panda algorithm, which I think clearly proves how flawed it is since this algorithm was supposed to do the exact opposite.

Because of this situation, if somebody thinks of spending money to create high quality reference-type content, I would strongly advise against it. You have no chance vs. Wikipedia's poorly-written articles repurposing your content and Google's flawed algorithms.

[lisper]

It seems a bit odd for you to be so cagey about the identity of this "original site" while at the same time lamenting that they aren't getting the traffic they deserve. Why don't you tell us who they are?

[zone411]

It's because I don't speak for the owners of the site and I'd rather make sure they don't mind me putting it out there like this. I could let you know privately, if you'd like to check my story for yourself, though.

[lisper]

Why on earth would they mind?

[zone411]

I'm not sure if they do mind. I do know that their relationship with Google is important to them when it comes to their much larger and more successful projects and that this site has been mostly left behind, so they may not want to bring it up in the context of this Hacker News post, even in the unlikely case that it resulted in this site getting its traffic back. Why not just email me and I'll show you a simple content site with minimal traffic, not using any black or gray-hat SEO tactics, with high-quality, original (to the Web) content, referenced in thousands of Wikipedia articles and you can decide for yourself if my post was truthful.

[dennisgorelik]

Could you get permission from the owners and publish it here?