One of the great things about the AOL data leak is we can actually go and test things we think are true or might be true by looking at actual searches.
In his recent Wikipedia and Brands blog posting Steve lists the top 100 brands and where the wikipedia page ranks for that company. You can get the PDF here. Now you don’t need a fancy college edumacation to tell you the higher up the result the more likely it is to be clicked, so lets grab the brands with the highest wikipedia rankings and look at them compared to the AOL data. Coming in at #3 we have Directv, Circuit City and Acura.
Looking at the AOL data for Directv we see it was searched for 815 times and no one clicked on the wikipedia result. Just as reality check searching on AOL we see wikipedia is there.
For Circuit City we see 3200 searches with only one click to wikipedia. Again checking AOL wikipedia is present.
Last out of the gate it’s Acura with 391 searches and no wikipedia clicks. Checking AOL we see wikipedia is listed.
Lets what the people who actually went to wikipedia were searching for … hmm well it seems to center around something that stars with an “s” and ends with an “x”.
Now all of this data could simply be a byproduct of the less sophisticated AOL user base, or it could be something else … might be nice to see Bill Tancer and hitwise weight in on the Wikipedia and brands.
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{ 3 comments }
Michael,
Great analysis and counter, and clever use of AOL data. I chimed in here: http://attentionmax.com/blog/2006/09/how_influential_is_wikipedia_i.html.
Cheers,
Max
This is interesting, but I don’t think that AOL data can disprove the impact that wikipedia may have on various corporations.
People searching for nothing more than a company name are more than likely retail surfers. They want to look at Acura cars, so of course they hit the Acura website.
Someone looking for information relating to the actual business practices and history of the corporation will not likely be using a broad term, nor will they likely be using AOL. Someone doing due dilligence on a company, for example is going to be much more savvy than the typical AOL user.
I’m a little late to be jumping in on this, but I’ve recently done my own testing of the AOL data that I wanted to share with the greater SEO community. Basically I looked at search referral and search result ranking data over time for one of my websites to test how accurate the AOL data is at predicting increases in referrals as search result rankings go up. The bad news is that referrals didn’t go up as much as the AOL data suggested they might, and like you, one of my theories is unsophisticated AOL users.
Anyway, I hope you find it an intersting read and worth linking to: http://www.whiskeyandaspirin.com/?p=12. Thanks!
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