Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/SEO Optimization

Random proposal ►◄ Larger suggestions  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

SEO Optimization

• Problem: Sites like Wikiwands which aggregate Wikipedia content and then represent them to readers are frequently spotted on search engine result at about as high or sometime higher place than Wikipedia itself. While it's nothing of fault to have Wikipedia content rehosted and represent in different style as long as copyright and content origin are properly represented, increased readership on third party sites instead of Wikipedia itself could have a potential of leading to less chance of attracting readers into contributing to Wikipedia since those third party sites usually don't have as obvious direct link to let readers contribute to Wikipedia when readers want to make improvement, and in the long term it could lead to a reduction in number of new Wikipedia editors, which could be bad to Wikiprojects' long term survival.
• Proposed solution: Wikipedia the site itself, together with other wikiproject sites, can probably use better SEO, so that readers are attracted to read Wiki content on sites directly managed under WMF which also provide clear guidance toward new user on how to help and contribute to the project, turning more people into editors of the project in the long run.
• Who would benefit: The Wikimedia movement in general would benefit from it, as the Wikipedia site itself can better attract readers to turn into becoming an editor, thus improving Wikimedia project content. General readers can also be benefited by it, by reducing the chance of reader accidentally accessing other illicit sites featuring better SEO, which might contain malwares like mining script, or a false login page that try to obtain user password to compromise cybersecurity of users.
• More comments: This proposal is modified from proposal in the Sandbox. Also, note that smaller language Wikipedia, and other Wikiprojects, can easily benefit from having more readerships.
• Phabricator tickets: Some examples of related tickets: phab:T280476, phab:T245646, phab:T99587
• Proposer: C933103 (talk) 12:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• This seems like a larger task than CommTech is scoped for. --Izno (talk) 20:58, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

  So this is something that should be moved under the "larger suggestions" category? C933103 (talk) 13:32, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I have moved it accordingly. We'd love to help with this but SEO is a bit out of scope for us. Without having done any prior research or searching Phabricator, I believe our SEO might improve in time once we are able to serve mobile and desktop on the same domain, since Google at least does mobile-first crawling these days. Don't quote me on that, though. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• This is of particular concern for English Wikivoyage, which has struggled mightily due to the presence of Wikitravel, a for-profit version from which it was forked a decade ago. See voy:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Google and other search engines seem to already rather heavily favor Wikipedia in their search results. Perhaps this is more of a problem for smaller Wikis? Anyhow, I'm all in favor of any measures to get more eyes on more Wikimedia projects. Ottawajin (talk) 05:55, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support JopkeB (talk) 07:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose: wasting readers' donation money on SEO optimisation would be a joke. — Bilorv (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose Already under #SEO Phabricator group's focus. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:29, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Support Veilure (talk) 01:44, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose KingAntenor (talk) 07:29, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose Not worth the effort Thingofme (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 20:19, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose per Bilorv. Daniel Case (talk) 03:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)