Google is not much help with any hard figures. Any idea on how much it would cost for Google to return my article (about my wine bar, porn film, political party or whatever) to appear #1 on a search?

I'm trying to assign a rough economic benefit to promoting material on Wikipedia. Of course, the advertising cost would considerably underestimate the true cost, since appearing on Wikipedia gives the impression of neutrality and authority that a mere advertisement would not have.

The true cost would be the market rate for bribing a senior member of Wikipedia to promote the article but, again, I am having difficulty getting reliable information about this. Has anyone tried? All information treated with confidence.

There is no answer; it depends on the popularity of the search term. They'd probably let you have "womble porn" for a couple of bucks; Tesco's appearance at the top of any UK search on "food" may well be Google's single biggest source of income. Even then, your paid link will just appear on the right hand side with the other ads; the only way to get the plum "top of the search result" spot is to have the best clickthrough rate. (That is, to demonstrate that your link is actually what the people searching on the term want.)

Wikipedia click-throughs to external sites (as opposed to other Wikipedia articles) are actually very low. As an example, this was the result of the recent British Museum saga, in terms of click-throughs to the BM pages; the number of readers who clicked through to the BM website was consistently below 1% of readers.

The only way apart from getting the article into Wikipedia, of course. That suggests it would have considerable economic value, no? I agree it is hard to determine what the value would be.

Other evidence would be the market rate for paid articles - does anyone have information about that (again, treated with the strictest confidence).



But isn't that the theory of internet advertising? If a million people read the article, and only 1% click through, that's 10,000 people visiting your website.

The going rate for paid creation of Wikipedia articles is easily measured, since it's posted openly. It's not high; as Greg will tell you, it's not something you're going to be able to retire to the Caribbean on.

But unless you're Justin Bieber, a million people don't read your Wikipedia article. A typical Wikipedia article gets barely 1000 hits per month. Just to put that in perspective, Food on Wikipedia gets about 70,000 hits per month, which would translate into about 400-500 clickthroughs per month.

That's interesting. $5-10 per hour. Assuming it takes about 20 hours to contribute a well-researched article that will escape the attention of the more honest Wikipedians, that translates at $100-200. That's the value to the employee i.e. the article writer. The value to the one commissioning the article is probably higher. Probably not much higher.

Work to promote a POV in a more highly visible article would be more valuable of course. E.g. to correct all the errors in this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill to show how the damage caused by the ecosphere was slight, and that it wasn't the company's fault etc. How much would that be worth?

Probably a few million dollars and your immortal soul.

How much is BP spending right now on public relations and advertising? I see several of their ads promising to 'make it right' each day on MSNBC.com, and a few each week on what little television I watch. They're probably into the hundred million mark on PR...

Getting that article slanted in their favor would be invaluable. As long as you couldn't tie it to them.

Note 'by the ecosphere' - I assume you meant 'to the ecosphere'

Disturbing. For such a pittance, is anybody with any real ability going to be tempted?

Danger of this sort of thing, at least in my opinion, is the only people who will take the offer will not be competent and the quality will suffer.

Though, in the grand scheme of things in Wikipedia, quality suffering will not be noticeable.

I think that is why there was such a disconnect between Jimbo and Greg. I think Jimbo saw that somehow or other someone was going to make their internet fortune out of paid editing (and if it wasn't him it wasn't going to be anyone else ) while Greg always knew it was hobby site stuff. Meanwhile the Wikipediots, who cannot conceive of paid employment would see earning such big bucks as $5/hour as a pernicious and corrupting influence that would clearly warp anyone's mind.

And I've never understood the 'conflict of interest' thing anyway. It's not OK for a company to edit their own article because they have a 'conflict of interest'. But it is OK for a pedophile to edit articles about pedophilia, because they don't have a conflict of interest?

This is a thread that I'm eager to reply to... but I just don't have time at the moment. Remind me if I don't chime in within 48 hours.

Greg

When I tried a Google search for "wiki" "jimmy wales" etc no ads at all appeared suggesting that it would cost nigh on nothing to get the top. Advertisers have to blind bid against one another to get the top spot.

You can set your monthly spend, so have a flutter when you publish your 'letter of concern'.

SqueakBox is dipping his toes in the paid editing waters. His article was speedily deleted though. I wonder if he gave the money back?

Here you come to the frankly Marxist bias of Wikipedia. "Conflict of interest" is defined solely in terms of dollars and wages. The "cult of the amateur" MEANS that we're intrinsically dismissing economic activity, which is seen as intrinsically unfair to somebody whenever it takes place (being the product of an assymetically powered relationship), and therefore BAD.

You have to get your head around the incredible cognitive disonance that is WP. These are people who figure that if somebody paid their editors, they would be taking advantage of them. Like they don't take advantage of volunteers. Employees are wage-slaves, but the idea is that volunteers have a CHOICE. The same slave problem arises if anybody should take a job as a paid editor. Whenever money changes hands, some Marxists' blood pressure starts to rise, whereas people can take advantage of volunteer labor and abuse each other in social situations all they like. So long as wages aren't involved, Marxists don't give a crap.

Of course, when it's WMF's salaries and jobs, suddently they turn into libertarians. When I'm paying myself somebody else's donated money, suddenly I've very libertarian. But when it comes to the idea that somebody might pay YOU to do the same thing, suddenly I'm a Marxist and wouldn't dare let you be a slave of outside capitalistic interests.

There's ads on google?

*uses internet explorer* oh yeah weird

http://getfirefox.com
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/

I am reminded of the lyrics that other version of "The Red Flag" ...


But I am not sure it is "Marxist" ... is it still not closer to "feudal"?

The Marxists were willing and able to exploit their workers because they were in a disorganized, mentally disempowered feudal state and "worth" very little to nothing. Surely, Marxism is no the opposite but the flipside of capitalism. The replacement of the feudal lord with a worse one.

It is quite scary what people happily tolerate when you accidentally use a browser that doesn't have AdBlock. Google are being very annoying with their ads in YouTube which are intrusive and AdBlock hasn't quite got a way of blocking smoothly as yet.

Rather amazed that the advertising lobby hasn't criminalised the viewing of web pages without adverts as a computer crime.

Aye. Software development and design in general has this issue. Power-users know how to modify or manipulate a site to be more usable, have fewer ads, load faster, whatever. Regular users don't, and a wide gap emerges between the two. It makes it far more difficult to get the underlying problem addressed when those who know how to fix it do so only for themselves.

Some developers consciously try to not modify the software for themselves in order to experience what it's like for the regulars, but sometimes you get annoyed enough that something has to be done.

I experienced this with the horrible banners that keep being used on Wikimedia wikis. My compromise is to hide them on the English Wikipedia, but keep them enabled on other sites. So the occasional trip to MediaWiki.org or Meta-Wiki makes me rage at the excessive size and stupidity of the banners.

Upon further review, I think Eva's summed it up quite well. And, besides, I'd want Peter to clarify whether he is talking primarily about the search results on Google, or the paid results that appear (with a different color background) just above the top search results, or the contextual AdSense ad blocks that appear to the right.

It really does come down to whether the search is for "mesothelioma lawyer" or "asbestos lawyer" (one of the highest-paying AdSense themes), or simply for something like "Kalamazoo pizza" or "brass thumbtacks".

I have a lot of experience with AdSense, both on the buyer side and the publisher side. I've found that ads can be very effective for some targeted businesses... but for the most part, the only party getting rich off them is Google itself.

Getting something to #1 on Google isn't difficult, if you're content to be shooting for something a little less valuable than mesothelioma plaintiffs.