Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#21

Post by idoby » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #8

Monory wrote: post #2

Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!

People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from. Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up…

I imagine a future where a project like wikipedia is replicated endlessly by willing users on an IPFS-like network, where people can donate CPU, storage and bandwidth instead of money to pay for a centralized server, simply by running something like ipfs pin wikipedia (or a subset)

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#22

Post by realusername » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #16

I've definitely noticed that I"ve had to add "wiki" to my search results to see Wikpedia articles to certain subjects I'm searching for whereas in previous years, Wikipedia was almost always the number one result. I feel like I'm back in the 90s when Yahoo went from a pretty good search engine to mediocre with ads and stuff, and I marveled at the clean simplicity of Google. Now, I'm finding Google shows a bunch of ar…

I've been noticing it for a while, the search quality gets worse and worse every year. For me, the red line was the Panda update in 2011. That update completely destroyed the search quality by bringing dubious quality news articles and ecommerce websites on the top of search, it never really recovered since then.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#23

Post by zpeti » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

It's a shame that a lot of the antitrust criticisms of google don't focus on Youtube. The fact that youtube is one of the main rivals to wikipedia in results is highly suspicious to me, and should be to antitrust regulators.

Of course at this point its a bit of a self reinforcing cycle, because youtube ranks, it gets more and more content, becomes more popular, and so google might be ranking it more and more legitimately.

But I find it impossible to believe that youtube would have done as well and would be doing as well in SERPS if it wasn't a google property. They've clearly built another site and brand with their own monopoly, similar to internet explorer by microsoft.

It would be such an easy target to go after imo.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#24

Post by sjwright » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

matteuan wrote: post #19

tantalor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, as well as many other companies, has long relied on Wikipedia for its content. Now, Google and Google.org are giving back. Google.org President Jacquelline Fuller today announced a $2 million contribution to the Wikimedia Endowment. An additional $1.1 million donation went to the Wikimedia Foundation, courtesy of a campaign where Google employees decided where to direct Google’s donation dollars. https://tech…

Wikipedia spends more than that only for "Donation processing expenses". Of course it is a nice contribution but, in my opinion, very small if compared to the huge value that Google is able to get for free. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual-report/fin...

I was going to be even more cynical and say that 3 million sounds absolutely pathetic relative to the scale of both entities, and given how important it is to the quality of Google’s search results.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#25

Post by garyclarke27 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #8

Monory wrote: post #2

Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!

People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from. Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up…

I would rather Wikipedia took some advertising, rather than it’s begging pop ups which have become more intrusive and irritating recently.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#26

Post by doublesCs » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #16

I've definitely noticed that I"ve had to add "wiki" to my search results to see Wikpedia articles to certain subjects I'm searching for whereas in previous years, Wikipedia was almost always the number one result. I feel like I'm back in the 90s when Yahoo went from a pretty good search engine to mediocre with ads and stuff, and I marveled at the clean simplicity of Google. Now, I'm finding Google shows a bunch of ar…

If you have Firefox I would suggest that you go on Wikipedia.org, right-click the search box, click "Add keyword to this search", and pick a keyword. This makes it faster to find information that you know is on Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#27

Post by sjwright » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

garyclarke27 wrote: post #25

onion2k wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from. Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up…

I would rather Wikipedia took some advertising, rather than it’s begging pop ups which have become more intrusive and irritating recently.

That literally makes no sense. You'd rather a rectangle telling you to consume sugar than a rectangle asking if you can support an organisation that provides a service you use?

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#28

Post by LunaSea » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

bzb3 wrote: post #15

onion2k wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from. Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up…

And Wikipedia gets its information from their editors. When are the editors getting their fair share of the money? :')

Wikipedia is a non-profit and money goes to servers and wages for a few staff members.

Google gets advertisement money out of it and is a for-profit organisation ...

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#29

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #23

It's a shame that a lot of the antitrust criticisms of google don't focus on Youtube. The fact that youtube is one of the main rivals to wikipedia in results is highly suspicious to me, and should be to antitrust regulators. Of course at this point its a bit of a self reinforcing cycle, because youtube ranks, it gets more and more content, becomes more popular, and so google might be ranking it more and more legitima…

The main rivals to YT are sites like Vimeo and Twitch, not Wikipedia. And I don't think either of those is anywhere near YT-scale. It's really hard to run that kind of service in a profitable way, and even harder to let creators monetize their content directly the way YT does.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#30

Post by LunaSea » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #9

jawns wrote: post #6

Putting aside the criticisms of Google for its near monopoly on search, I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that Wikipedia "loses" a visit just because Google happens to be able to deliver the desired information on the search results page itself. In many cases, visitors aren't using Google search because they want a webpage. They're using Google search because they want an answer to a question. Google is answ…

Right. This is not "Google stealing clicks", it's users saving clicks because they were only interested in looking up that kind of basic information. It optimizes time and effort.

And how will that work when Wikipedia stops existing due to a decrease in funds from people seeing the donation banner?