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The benefits of getting your URL on Wikipedia are pretty huge, especially if you’re in to Google Bombing or want to boost your Pagerank. This is not only because Wikipedia has a Page Rank of 7 but also because Wikipedia has thousands of mirrors and forks. So once your URL is on Wikipedia, it’s eventually going to end up on hundreds of other websites. If you read the linked articles on Google Bombing and Page Rank then you will realise this means quite a bit.

So here’s my plan on how to abuse Wikipedia for your Googlebomb and Pagerank boosting needs.
I’d say it’s nearly impossible to get your URL into a Wikipedia article without it being whipped about by a Wikipedian within hours, assuming the URL you’re trying to sneak in isn’t all that relevant or just looks suspicious. Beleive me, I’ve tried it. So what’s the solution? Make a Wikipedia article! Even if the article is about the site you’re linking to, that’s acceptable on Wikipedia, it doesn’t matter. I have also tried this, and this works so much better. Once this is done, you consult the list of thousands of mirrors and forks and get constructing a link to the article on each of these forks, to make sure Google indexes that and sees lots and lots of links to your website. Of course, it will take some time (these mirrors don’t update in real time), but eventually you will start to see your link everywhere.

Here’s an example that I just thought up, you have a website and you have a sponsor”, your sponsor pays you $20 for each book about Rasputin they sell as a result of a hit from your website. Your website is http://rasptutin-rocks.com and you just have some blurb about Rasputin then a big link to your sponsor’s site. Now, you want to boost your Page Rank and Google Bomb your site to the top for the query “Rasputin Books”. Now, the uneducated Wiki spammer would go look up Rasputin on Wikipedia then add their link at the bottom, with the text “Rasputin Books”. A blatant attempt to Google Bomb and advertise that would result in the immediate deletion of the link. But the educated Wiki spammer, what would they do? Start and article about this particular sponsor. Give some made up company history, a little information, whatever. Even disparaging comments about the site to make it look less like spam. And then, at the bottom just a little “Examples of Sites Promoting this Sponsor” and then a nice link to the Rasputin books site. You could even make it look like this article is declaring the sponsor to be a bad site that seeks traffic and purchases through deception and then “name and shame” the evil, naughty sites that promote the sponsor.

So that’s my idea.

For the record, I really like Wikipedia; I think it’s a great site and I look forward to seeing how they deal with this kind of spam.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 6:59 am and is filed under Google, Hackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.