Why does Wikipedia pages come on the top in Google Search Results

One of the questions posed by many SEO enthusiasts is why does Wikipedia always comes on top of a Google search. Wikipedia is the one website which is said to help youngsters in their reports, elders in their projects and the savvies to satisfy their cravings. But what makes Google tick? How does a simple content based website soar to a PageRank 8 giant with more than 6 million external links? Why does wiki scores when it comes to Google. Another meaningful question comes up, Can Wikipedia sustain its position among the top corporations who play by the money?

A really powerful yet meaningful statement was once made by Jimmy or "Jimbo" Wales the co-founder of Wikipedia on its creation, "The core of Wikipedia is something people really believe in. That is too valuable for the world to screw it up.". So lets hear all about the myths and truths about the web giant which floats on donations...

The Myths

Many answers were found in answers.com and yahoo answers along with several forums to start with. Though the answers surely deserve a face-palm but one must know what the people think too.

Pay me some

So some not so knowledgeable say that Wikipedia pays money to Google to put it on the top. Let me remind you that in my own 7 year journey, I've never  seen a single premium ad for Wikipedia  Let us assume for the sake of it, that it is true if you talk about premium ads, but Wikipedia runs on charity. With no other means of getting money (adverts included), the website cannot even think of premium listings.

Ol Reciprocal way

Some have even discussed the possibility of reciprocal links shared between Google and wiki. Which seems thoroughly far-fetched as google itself seems to be against reciprocal links. But can it be true? Of course not! The pages at Wikipedia are always written, moderated and maintained by general public.

Business hotshots

Some forums suggested big-shots pay Wikipedia to generate articles on their business which is finally paid to get links. This again leads to a fallacy because they just have 400 servers and 95 to 100 people in staff. In short the number 5 site serves 454 million different people every month – with billions and billions of page views. Even after all this, the web giant is merely holding its ends together let alone buy links to get on the top. Haven't you seen the donation requests by its founders? People can still donate at the keep wiki free campaign.

The Truths

Among the illogical and flawed reasons explained by the seemingly less knowledgeable webmaster community, people seem to forget the reason which lies right in-front of them, proper and legal search engine optimization techniques. The following are the techniques and methodologies adopted by the Wikimedia community which automatically leads Wikipedia right up to the doorways of great SERPs.

Profound content system

This is the one thing that slaps in the face of every two cent critic who says ‘pages at wiki are basically a collection of copied statements from various websites’. It is quite evident from the studies that content on the pages at wiki are never copied, instead just the idea and the logic is represented in a more tasteful and detailed manner. To find more about ways Wikipedia can copy, take a look at the list at SEOmoz.

In short the system of User Generated Content can be very well seen in its true form. It is however increasingly evident that its all the other way-round  People actually copy the complete text from wiki to impress superiors with their report. There are cases when people try to prevent others from copying from their website (There are methods however to get around it). But never has anybody seen Wikipedia done something so far.

Update Frequency

It is a very known fact that search bots for different search engines visit websites according to the frequency of updation. In short more a page is updated the more will it be visited by Google search bots to keep the Google directory updated. The system was very well explained in previous articles. The following are the revision history for two separate pages present in Wikipedia.

The same methodology of updation is followed by several webmasters to make sure that their blog/website stays up all the time. The philosopy of updation is followed even in the backrooms of codemakit.com. After writing quality content this is next big thing a website must do.

Detailed and deep linking

When a search engine bot finds out a hyperlink, The bot visits the page its linked to. This is noted in the directory. If the said page again contains a link which has not been yet been included in the directory, required steps are taken. Wikipedia's attempt at helping search engines refresh their directories is often rewarded with higher SERPs. 

Psychology

Wiki pages are often regarded as ones that affect the psychology of the users by brainwashing them with huge information and innumerable hyperlinks. This finally leads the users to believe that every thing that exists on a wiki page is ‘Sanatan’ Truth, which is one of the reasons why Wikipedia pages are the ones that are always cited in reports and briefs. This repercussion however gives rise to another good thing, the users in lieu of their belief spend higher time on the page than any other website. 

The psychological technique however is arguably the side effect of its profound content and moderation systems mixed with an inherent need for betterment and detail by the moderators and contributors. There are several other psychological methods which can help webmasters pull the user’s focus. It is discussed in detail at a previous article on the Psychology of SEO.

Keyword and domain Authority

One of the main reasons for higher SERPs for different terms is because of its keyword and domain authority.

Lets not pull facts out of thin air and see some example for domain authority.

The following page for SEO (website)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

It is pretty clear that wiki has won the round for domain as well as keyword authority. Not many pages would have such clear cut separations for different terms.

Exceptional linking system

According to Majestic SEO, the Wikipedia domain has about 50,713 referring domains and an impressive 6,611,255 external back-links. Two very important link based terms come under purview. These terms are in use by Majestic SEO to determine the authority and importance of the said website. 

Citation flow which is the number of citations to a particular URL or domain stands at 70 which certainly speak for itself. The trust flow which is the number of clicks from a set of trusted websites.

Brilliant use of NoFollow

Wiki has one side which is untouched and unseen by many. Let us look at the selfish side of Wikipedia and the people behind it. Here are some of the examples.

HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/HUBBLE_SPACE_TELESCOPE

Total Links: 1732

Internal Links: 1545

Out-Going Links: 187

No-Follows: 188

HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/GODDARD_SPACE_FLIGHT_CENTER

Total Links: 445

Internal Links: 407

Out-Going Links: 38

No-Follows: 38

HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/TROPICAL_SAVANNA_CLIMATE

Total Links: 167

Internal Links: 165

Out-Going Links: 2

No-Follows: 1

The above are 3 different cases of tree different Wikipedia pages. As is quite evident from the above, nearly every outgoing link is a NoFollow.

“Wiki has been famous for using and throwing links, I was on the top of the world when I saw a link towards my website from Wikipedia  The disheartening news came to me afterwards when I found out that it was peppered with a  NoFollow link.” says a frustrated anonymous webmaster.

The above cases have been observed in many occasions. Here the editing and the references are given in such a way that the link juice does not flow off. This methodology has been used by webmasters over the decades to improve the pagerank. The same Nofollow has been used by bloggers in their blog comments to take care of comment spammers. However, for Wikipedia even if the editing is done honestly, then the moderators or proofreaders will convert the innocent looking link into a NoFollow. Such usage opens up possibilities of users going directly to the website from wiki itself, but limits the possibility of the website getting higher links because of an increase in the PageRank or domain authority. In short the excellent use of NoFollow wherever required helps wiki to float above others in the rat race.

Back-links in Overwhelming numbers

Here another usage of the psychological technique comes into play. Webmasters and enthusiasts keep on quoting Wikipedia for different subjects in the process of making the article more and more authentic. Its their way of saying "See! didn't I tell ya! its on Wikipedia too, go check it out." Now multiply this attitude to the millions of bloggers and webmasters and you'll get a jaw dropping number. \

According to data from Majestic SEO from checkpagerank, Wikipedia has 862,698,514 External Back-links, 2,749,595 Referring Domains, 2,144,395 Back-links from educational websites and 314,508 Back-links from government websites out of which, acquiring later two in such numbers is a feat in itself.

Therefore authenticating the statement from my friend Samuel Johnson, who used to say "Next time you feel like pointing finger at the content giant; try matching their numbers and then we'll talk."

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How to create Water color effect in Photoshop

Today, we welcome our guest author Himanshu Sharma. Himanshu, an expert in Photoshop here explains all about How to create a Water color effect in Photoshop. So sit back and enjoy this detailed tutorial in Himanshu's words.

In this tutorial on Photoshop, you will understand how to create watercolor effects using Photoshop and how to make a photo look similar to watercolor painting. This watercolor effect is suitable for photos which has rich colors with high contrast rather than minute details, since the effect can eradicate many of the minor details.  

It is very easy to create the water color effect by duplicating certain layers, application of certain filters and making use of certain layer blend modes. The entire thing just takes few minutes for completion and you can save it in different forms (.jpg or .gif) as you wish. This tutorial will explain how to simulate watercolor effect using some brushes in Photoshop.

Step 1 : First create a new document by clicking File-- New and also create new layer. Now fill the layer with white background and rename the layer as texture. Now choose Filter and click Filter-- Texture-- Texturizer. You can use Canvas for texture with eighty percent scaling.

Step 2 : Now open the image from file menu and add it to the document. You should delete the background of the image by using both Polygonal Lasso (L) and Path Tool (P) or with help of magic wand.

Step 3 : Now use the Selection Tool to select the layer in which the girl is there. Now Go to Image-- Adjustments and choose Levels. You should enhance the whites here and choose Image-- Adjustments-- Saturation/Hue and change the level of saturation to -65.

Step 4 : Now use the Water Color Filter present in Filter-- Artistic-- Watercolor. You can make use of below settings, Texture 1, Shadow Intensity 0 and Brush Detail 9.

Step 5 : After selecting the layer of the girl’s image, Chose Layer-- Layer Mask-- Reveal All. You can select black color and mask the girl’s body using the Brush Tool (B).

Step 6 : Now you can use the Watercolor brushes specifically designed for this purpose from Bittboxx website. Now choose a new layer and select the Brush Tool. Now you have to create new layer and use the Water Color brush tool with black color selected. You are designing the hair of the girl in water color style to give a realistic look. You can resize or rotate the layer after you finish the brushing.

Step 7 : Now choose Blending options from Layer Style. Change the Opacity of the Layer to 0 and chose Color Overlay option. You can Use Red color and select the blend mode as Multiply. You can also use the Opacity to be filled as 70 percent. For Blend Mode use Hard Light and fill with Purple Color with Angle set as twenty degrees, Distance as 4 pixels and Size as 12 pixels.

Step 8 : Now create another layer and use the Bittbox brush tool for designing a hair-style which looks creative and beautiful. Try to make certain paint brush strokes in the center of the screen and then rotate or resize the layer to fit it with rest of the picture. You should be able to generate a decent hair style as described in below picture.

Step 9 : Now choose Blending options in Layer Styles and set Fill options as 0. Now select Color Overlay mode and Blend mode with Blue color selected and Opacity set as fifty percent. Now use Satin option for blending.

Step 10 : Now use the same Brush tool again and paint the hair with different color say Green. You can reduce the size and add more hair and rotate it if required. Again Go to Blending options and set Fill Options as 0. Now Choose Color Overly with Blend mode set as Multiply, Green Color chosen and Opacity set as 100 percent. Now use Satin for the image. You can use the settings as Dark green with blend mode as Darken.

Step 11 : Now repeat the process again with another Layer with different color. Then select the layer that has girl’s face and set blend mode as screen. Now you can make certain adjustments like adjusting the neck with regular brush and white color.

Step 12 : Now you can add some Title to the image. Use the same brushes and fill the text with different color. You can also use Filters like Sprayed Strokes form the Filters menu. You can change the appearance to water color by choosing Filter-- Artistic-- Water color. This will give a creative look the image.

Conclusion : Finally you have got the image of a girl which appears as it was painted with water color. This tutorial explains in a simple fashion of how to add watercolor effects to a photo and applying different blend modes. You should also remember that the artwork will appear original as if it was painted with natural water colors.

This is the entire procedure for creating Water Color effect in Photoshop. For knowing more about such graphics /design related information and tips, visit Design Graphica.

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LinkedIn and its 10 year Story

Believe it or not, LinkedIn just turned ten years old on May 5th, i.e. on Sunday. The networking Giant started in 2003 with an aim of connecting professionals all over the world. Let us have a peek at the insides of this two letter word.

The marketing approach for LinkedIn which includes finding a niche group of consumers and feed off them, is presumably working quite well for them. Lets go beck to its history, Founded in December 2002 by Konstantin Guericke, Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, 

LinkedIn has acquired more than 200 million professionals in more than 200 countries. The company filed for an IPO in the start of 2011 and started trading under NYSE.

Even After 10 successful years, LinkedIn still is fighting for its place in the social media. Its competitors include, Viadeo, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, XING etc and the list still grows. 

Regarding Reid Hoffman, considered as the founder of the social Networking Giant, he grew up in Berkeley and went to high school at the Putney in Vermont.He graduated in Stanford and majored in symbolic systems. It was here when he delved into the human mind and its process of communication. Though he was one of the lucky ones who got a scholarship to Oxford to study philosophy, but he was adamant against academics. 

His First entrepreneurial stint was with Socialnet. In November 1999, he went to work at PayPal where he was a part of external relations. But soon time came when they had to sell PayPal to eBay and when most people thought that it was very bad year for the internet, Reid dreamt of starting LinkedIn in 2002. In 2009, Jeff Weiner joined as the President and just after 2 years the company went public. Reid Hoffman proudly shares his emotions on his blog.

"Inspired by the invaluable role relationships played in our own careers, we launched LinkedIn with the tagline “Relationships matter."

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The Secret to Organisation in Blogging (From the Backrooms of codemakit.com)

How do professional bloggers write such amazing articles every week? Some might even work on 5 to 10 articles at a time. Some work on just 2 to 3 really long articles with a lot of information locked up in a capsule. So the obvious question pops up, how can a blogger, manage to work on 10 blog posts at a time.

A professional blogger can work on up to 10 blog posts at a time. The multitasking allows them time and space to think about ideas both in quantity and in quality.

The average number is 8 however. Organizing is the key to better and efficient content creation. Once you organize everything you can hold large number of articles at a time. This herculean task is obviously difficult for any blogger who doesn't organize. Now organizing your blog posts is just like organizing a research, you need to divide information into chunks so that you can better manage it.

The Root Folder

Let’s have a look at a typical case of a windows blogger (i.e. at the backrooms of codemakit.com). The main blog folder is divided into 3 headers.

1. Blog Idea – It contains reading material, pdfs and pictures to help you understand the topics you’re working on.
2. Blog Pictures – Contains templates for new images, incomplete image projects etc.
3. New Articles – Contains all the new articles, that you’re writing, updating or written.

As is evident from the screenshot in the New Articles folder, the Posts Title is usually thought-of before the article is written and the complete post with images, article snippets, source articles and pages from other websites is then stored in the particular folder.

The Details

The folder system of storing the articles is presumably better and much more organized, so it removes the searching time and avoids the hassle.

Now the complete blog folder (i.e. main folder) is filled with such individual folders containing one article each along with the source media. The folders can then be divided into four parts.

1. Articles under construction – The majority of articles are under construction and most articles are either incomplete as per content or images/video or those which need more research.
2. Completed - The articles which have been completed in every sense in the author’s view. They are touched only on the day of publishing.
3. Articles to be Updated – It contains the articles which has already been posted long time ago but now needs a major remodeling, as with the passing of time, some articles become outdated and Some non-essential.
4. Update – There are pieces of information which is needs to be added to an already posted article. It contains updated media (i.e. an image to spice up the article or a video to make it more interesting). This update will not contain the article as a whole but just the media to be added.

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An Interview with Veerle Pieters of Duoh.com

In this interview, we’ll peek into the design methods and techniques of design whiz Veerle Pieters. With her award winning website Duoh.com and her detailed blog, she is considered as one of the authorities in new age design.

Veerle Pieters was born near Bruges a left-handed who taught herself to be an ambidextrous. She began her career in 1992 in print, focusing mainly on logos, stationery etc and web Design 1995. She founded Duoh! In 2000 with her loving partner Geert Leyseele. Her dream is to be certain that I contribute in small but important ways to making the "interweb" a better place.

On Inspiration

Mohit: Your designs are always dripping with originality and detail, how do you manage to bring out such beautiful yet meaningful designs? What is your inspiration?

Veerle: My inspiration comes from what I see around me and from what I catalog on my Inspiration Stream. I try not worry about trends and just do my thing. When you start a project listening is an important part so you understand what the client needs and you have enough information to translate all that in a design.

On Favorites

Mohit: You have designed Web, CMS, Logos, Illustrations, Icons and even print. What is your favorite category for work?

Veerle: Print still has a bit of an edge because there is nothing that beats having what you created in your hands. The smell of print, the tactile feedback of paper etc. All in all I like the diversity in what I do. The fact that I can switch to coding when I hit a wall in a design for example.

On Social Networks

Mohit: I went through your entire website and found it hard to find your twitter link on your homepage, why did you avoid any link even when you had 1500 followers on twitter?

Veerle: There is a Twitter link on my homepage but it’s way down in the footer. For me personally Twitter was never about have a big amount of followers. I never actively promoted my Twitter so that people would follow me. For me this is just a channel to share what I am passionate about and a channel for helping people by sharing great resources. It’s simple really; if you have something interesting to say people will follow you.

On Work

Mohit: You have a string of impressed and satisfied customers, How do you manage this feat, Is it your charges or your work?

Veerle: I always try to do my best for every project. Not always easy but I assume that’s what clients appreciate. If you deliver great work and try to find solutions when problems occur clients will return for more. It’s a two way street and about giving & taking.


Mohit: You have been in design business for long, you must have had hardships. What is it that keeps you going?

Veerle: The first 5 to 6 years I really struggled to earn enough to make a living. Times were really different and the Internet wasn't around. You had to go out and find clients. Not an easy task if you became a freelancer right out of school because nobody would give you a job. There were a few things in my portfolio but I always heard the same excuse ‘lack of experience’.  That’s why I started my own business. Only problem was that I focused on the wrong clients, little shops that demanded a lot for very little money. Things only started to change when I got out of comfort zone and hit the road to visit business parks to introduce my work and myself. The only thing that kept me going was that I love what I do and that I knew this was what I love waking up for.

The Epilogue

Mohit: Last but not the least, what advice would you give to amateur designers?

Veerle: Don’t loose the passion for what you do even if you fail from time to time. Failing is all part of what we do everyday. Another important aspect is that the learning process never stops. That’s why you need to be really passionate. There is always something new to discover and you are never sure if what you learn today will still be around in a few months. The learning process never stops.

Read about her works in different spheres of Design below,

Graphic and Web Design, On CSS, HTML, Web design Concepts

Modern Home Design, where you'll be convinced that design extends beyond the web.

Belgian Graphic Design, filled with Belgian flavored print design

Connect with her on her twitter page

For More Information feel Free to visit The Company Website (Duoh.com)

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Google’s Crawling Process De-Mystified

It is interesting to know that the process of crawling is done with the help of a program known as Google-bot. The program is so written that it follows an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, when to crawl, and how often to crawl. 

The crawling process starts from one URL, the bot then encounters an external link or Internal Link. In a particular URL, Google-bot processes metatags, Image sources, Hyperlinks, ALT tags. However, Google confesses that its algorithm cannot process rich media files or dynamic pages.

The frequency of Google’s crawl process is a grey area. Two different types of crawl process happen on a website.

• Fresh Crawl: Maximum 6 days to crawl. Very few URLs crawled at a time.
• Deep Crawl: Extensive amount of crawling done. Might take upto a month for completion.

Similarly for Google's search Process, There are three main parts of Google’s search process.

• Google Bot
• The Indexer
• The Query Processor

Google Bot

Google-Bot or Google’s web crawler is a program which crawls and pulls pages from the web and gives it to the Indexer. Its function in detail is to find a page, download or cache the entire web page and send it to the Indexer. It is interesting to note, that to prevent overloading of servers by Google’s requests, the Google-bot, deliberately crawls through the site slower than its Have a look at the Google Guide.

Google’s Indexer

The indexer is basically a dictionary or directory operative. The pages retrieved by Google-Bot is stored in the Indexer, sorted alphabetically. The indexer ignores words like ‘of’, ‘on’, ‘how’, ‘why’ and punctuation marks in addition to multiple spaces. Read More at Google Truths

Google’s Query Processor

The processor’s main function is to process the commands given by the user and match them to the already documented files in the indexer. The complete process is carried out in accordance with the so called, Google’s PageRank. You can find out more about PageRank in previous articles.
It is interesting to note that a single query made by the user to the search box, 1000 machines in 0.2 seconds as per Amit agrawal from Labnol

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Some Extremely funny Comments

Nearly all webmasters encounter spam on their websites. But a few have the time to properly read the spam before deleting it. On reading spam comments, you find that even spammers have a funny bone. A creative individual would always find new ways to do things. Such is the creativity displayed by spammers while dodging the inbuilt blogger filters. The following are some examples of such comments where spammers tried link building as well as humor creation.

The following anonymous comment was left at an article few months back, Though the comment has been deleted, but its still funny to see the situation of the spammer, who gets up at 6 in the morning to spam and tries to sell twitter followers.

The shaving mirrors has been one of the most loyal spammers on codemakit, this was until a message was displayed near the comments section about nofollow attribute and its usage in comments section. The following comment was left at How many Internal Links do I need to be in top 500? Even then it’s comment is usually filled with text followed by an obvious link.

The following comment was left at Include a favicon in your site, However it has been removed for obvious reasons, The guy tries to explain that the article is rife with spelling problems and then attaches a link to help lose weight fast at home.

The anonymous comment spams at 7 in the morning, but the one thing that gives humor to the comment is its flattery flavored semantically incorrect text. Again a link to get followers (what do you think of a guy who wakes you up in the morning to sell twitter followers.

You can also view another article laced with more funny comments at Some Funny Comments I

These were,

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