Wikipedia:Featured article review/Search engine optimization/archive2


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Nikkimaria 18:04, 14 October 2012.

Review commentary

 * Notified: Jehochman, Bonadea, Ohnoitsjamie, Versageek, WP Computing, WP Business, WP Internet

I'm putting this up for FAR mainly because of reference issues. Overall the concerns with OR, verifiability and unreliable sources is the largest issues, in my opinion. This seems to be an article that is popular with people attempting to popularize themselves or their personal search engine, which is probably where a large portion of the un/poorly sourced information has come from. Dana boomer (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
 * See tags regarding original research, verification and unreliable sources. (Major concern)
 * There are additional untagged areas that need sources: third paragraph in White hat versus black hat section, second paragraph International markets
 * It seems strange that the Legal precedents section only covers a five year time span.
 * It seems that a huge proportion of the references are to what are in this case are primary sources (Google, Yahoo, Bing and their employees). I would hope that it would be possible to find secondary (and in many cases higher quality) sources for much of this information.
 * Some outdated information. For example, "In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches." is almost a decade out of date.
 * Ref formatting should be made consistent and information (access dates, etc) added where necessary.
 * More minor MOS issues include formatting things such as extraneous spaces between punctuation and refs and similar concerns.


 * The prose needs a once over. I see lots of one-sentence paragraphs in "History", and nearly the entire last half of that section is nothing but "In X, Y happened."
 * As already mentioned, many citations are to Google, Yahoo! and Bing themselves.
 * Also as mentioned, there is a complete lack of more recent info, and much of what's already here is now quite dated. The article is clearly not being maintained.

Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:49, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I eliminated the worst problem contents, but it still would benefit from updating. I hope somebody takes on the task. The article is a magnet for spammers. All the spam and revert cycles result in occasional retention of bad content. That's been cleaned up. Somebody with time could read it top to bottom and help with gentle copy editing and updating. Jehochman Talk 20:33, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Issues raised in the review section include prose, content, sourcing and NPOV. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:37, 12 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Delist per stability problems alone, but no other problem seems to have been taken care of. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Delist - while I appreciate the work that Jehochman did, this article is still a ways from FA status. Quite a few of my comments above have not been addressed (outdated information, ref formatting, Legal precedents section, etc). The biggest issue that I see is still the lack of secondary sources. The argument at the time of the FAC was that there were few (if any) books written on the topic; this argument cannot still be made, based on a quick Google/Amazon/WorldCat search. Dana boomer (talk) 01:26, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Times change. There are plenty of books now.  Marketing in the Age of Google and The Art of SEO are two I recommend.  This article was previously a good article.  If it is delisted it should go back to Good, no?  Hopefully an editor with time available will come along, read those books, and upgrade the article.  The content of the article is still accurate.  The extensions needed would be a discussion of recent algorithm changes by Google, including the Google Panda and Google Penguin algorithms. Also, it should be mentioned that Yahoo is no longer a search engine.  They source their results from Bing. Jehochman Talk 20:17, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Times definitely change :) And, no, an article does not go back to GA status when delisted from FA - when an article is promoted to FA from GA it loses its GA status (is removed from the GA pages), and when demoted from FA does not regain that status. So, to be re-listed as a GA, it would need to go through a new GAN. Dana boomer (talk) 21:20, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I am going to see if there is an editor who'd like to update this. It probably doesn't require a huge amount of work.  Some of the online sources, such as SearchEngineLand are excellent. The books will only cover matters up to 2010 or so.  For recent developments we will still have to rely on the online sources.  Jehochman Talk 23:43, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment any progress? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 10:55, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delist It is outdated since a lot has happend in this area since the majority of this article was written. --Harthacnut (talk) 18:07, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Delist I'm finding the quality is going downhill as article becomes more and more biased to showcase the views of insiders who hold stakes on this topic like Danny Sullivan (of Searchengineland a reference frequently quoted), Matt Cutts(of Google), Danny Sullivan, and others like "WebProNews". As you can see, Jehochman defends these arguably questionable reliability SEO producers while some of them watch his back and what I see as collaborative effort between SEO personnel (to look after each other) is threatening objective neutrality and veering towards industry newsletter. While we have Wiki editors like Jehochman who swear up and down that "Searchengineland is excellent source", there's no general consensus that they're considered reputable source. Same with iNetwork's WebProNews that offers articles by "staff writers" that can look like personal blogs. While tags may have been removed, reliability of these sources haven't been demonstrated beyond personal assertions from one or very few editors that they're "highly reliable".Cantaloupe2 (talk) 11:50, 4 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.