I noticed that when I Googled "encyclopedia", this came up in the margin under "Sponsored Links":



Does anyone know anything about Google's advertising relationship with Wikimedia?

Wait, I thought Wikimedia had nothing to do with Wikipedia??

EDIT: Sorry, getting confused with Wikia and Wikimedia...

Of course the idea of freeing the knowledge of the world is rubbish as it already is free- in places called libraries. Also you can often get free access to other reference resources for free at your own home using your library card. The real reason they want to promote Wikipedia is as Wales has said himself to destroy the established reference sources with the liberal anti US bias that he perceives that they have (and of course to allow people like Jayjg and SlimVirgin to have free reign to expunge Wikipedia of any liberal bias that might creep into it).

It looks like a Google public service ad; nothing to get excited about: http://www.google.com/services/charity_ads.html

Chances are that the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't even know about them.

Aren't you in effect though saying that Google is promoting Wikipedia (for free)? Of course we already know that they artificially boost the rank of Wikipedia pages.

Yes, but it's a matter of scale. The ranking boost is outrageous. But the little ads only show up in response to searches for keywords where Google cannot come up with a paid ad. How many people are searching for "encyclopedia"?

All it means is that Google has a list of nonprofit public charities with little text ads that they can throw up when they can't think of a way to make money off of your search. Nonprofits can ask to be on this list. No one gets any money from these ads when they're clicked. Maybe Wikimedia Foundation asked to be on this list, or maybe they didn't. I just don't see it as earth-shaking.

I agree with Daniel.

That begin said, "encyclopedia" is probably a $5 or $10 "maximum price willing to pay per click" Adword on Google. I tried to list it in my Adwords portfolio for Centiare.com, but it never comes up for less than $5. I prefer to capture the words and phrases that I can still nab for $1.25 or less. Therefore, I would say that "encyclopedia" is a fairly frequently-searched word on Google (I believe it's around the 50th percentile of all words), but not close to the kingpin words like "sex", "porn", "paris hilton", or "Viagra" (1st percentile).

According to Yahoo's Overture keyword tool, the word "encyclopedia" was queried (alone, not with other words) on Yahoo! some 153,672 times in January 2007.

If anyone is interested, the search terms with at least 20 impressions since February 2007 that have produced my highest click-through rate on ads for Centiare.com are:

Denny Vrandecic (4.5% click-through rate)
citizendium.org
open serving
Wikipedia is wrong
directory wiki
Jayjg
semantic mediawiki
openserving
Greg Kohs
Centiare
Larry Sanger (0.86% click-though rate)

I have gotten the most click-throughs on a volume basis with:

citizendium
corporation directory
wikitruth
directory wiki
"Linda Mack"
Jayjg
wiki business

That's your "nugget o' knowledge" for the day, folks!

P.S. Google, if I have violated any of your terms of service for disclosing this information in public, I apologize in advance.

Greg

Google --> Wikipedia --> Amazon --> $$$ ?

I agree this is probably not earth-shaking but it does fit the pattern.

What connection is there between Wikipedia and Amazon, other than Amazon's VC investment in Wikia?

External links to Amazon and to IMDB.

Nearly 150,000 of them, last I counted.

And don't forget Jeff Blackburn. He's the SVP of Business Development for Amazon. Oh, wait -- he's also on the Wikia Board of Directors. Should be less than 6 months before Der Jimbo finds him some position at the Wikimedia Foundation, too. Seriously, it wouldn't surprise me one iota.

Those links are money, folks. Even if they average only one click-through per day each, and one-half of one percent of those lead to an Amazon purchase, and the average purchase is only $12, that's still $3.3 million annually for Amazon, courtesy of Der Jimbo's giant link farm-o-pedia.

Greg

Makes sense to me. Jimbo's a freaking genius.