[pmwiki-users] WikiWords and Google

H. Fox haganfox at users.sourceforge.net
Sat Mar 4 17:20:37 CST 2006


On 3/4/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 09:59:41PM +0100, kirpi at kirpi.it wrote:
> > I happened to read here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase_and_Wiki] that
> >
> > [WikiWords] are recognized by search engine spiders and indexers as
> > single words, thus ranking pages incorrectly...
> >
> > Of course you might say to me "Ask Google and friends!", but for the
> > moment I just ask you all: does the phrase above means that, just to
> > be practical, it is better to drop the use of WikiWords and use [[]]
> > instead? (The need for Google's correct ranking is given for granted,
> > here.)
>
> I think the overriding concern should be "what is easiest for the
> authors", and I'm pretty sure Google would agree on this one.
>
> Google's algorithms really emphasize quality of page content over all
> other factors, and so whatever makes it easier for authors to frequently
> add useful content to the site and link to relevant topics is what will
> have the largest impact -- far more than the choice of how the words
> are structured.
>
> And I'm not sure I buy the argument that CamelCaseWords will cause
> the search engines to rank things "incorrectly"

Does this mean you don't think it makes any difference if the HTML
<title> and H1 heading are wikiwords or not?  If it does, let me make
the argument you don't buy...

I've read over and over that titles and headings are important for
search engine optimization.  Here are are two references.  There are
*lots* more.

"...the title is the most important single element.. Headings are like
little titles that can be worked into a site's content..."
http://www.seomix.com/2005/11/how-to-properly-utilize-headings-in-seo/

"Page title is arguably the single most important aspect of code-level
optimization."
"Other than page titles, writing good headings for your content is one
of the most beneficial practices of code-level SEO."
http://www.soxiam.com/HowTo/BasicSEOForWebDesigners

In the PmWiki default skin the wikipage title is an <H1> heading, as a
wikiword.  This means the HTML <title> and the highest-priority
heading are both wikiwords by default.

I don't know about "correctness", but I think it's almost certain that
this has a negative effect on search engine optimization compared to
not using wikiwords.

Am I missing something?

Hagan




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