[Foundation-l] Question to post...

Fri Aug 14 00:28:48 UTC 2009

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Gregory Maxwell<gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Cox, Serita<Serita.Cox at bridgespan.org> wrote:
>> Google's new search engine, Caffeine, is supposedly kicking Wikipedia
>> entries further down results page. Thoughts? Comments?
>> http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39484015,00.htm
> [from my comments in #wikimedia-tech the other day]
> "So— I tried 20 random words, and the WP result was lower in four of
> them, the same in the rest."
> "No pattern really...  We still have the problem with "article at funny name;
> redirect from common name; common name search on google gives squat",
> which I consider to be much more major."

A simple solution to this is using the canonical tags which all major
search engines started supporting earlier this year.

<http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/?
Wikia's GPL code to add this to MediaWiki is available here:
<https://wikia-code.com/wikia/trunk/extensions/wikia/CanonicalHref/CanonicalHref.php?
More info on it in Nick's blog post at
<http://www.techyouruniverse.com/wikia/google-canonical-href-with-mediawiki>

Angela