[Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL

[Roderic Page]

Dear Paul,

In once sense, yes, Wikipedia has been around longer than EOL. But  
this rather strengthens my argument that trying to compete against  
Wikipedia is foolish, EOL is too late to market (if the market is  
defined as web pages about individual taxa).

Furthermore, time itself isn't enough. ITIS has been online since the  
late 90's, before Wikipedia even existed (which went live Jan 2001),  
yet ITIS has nothing like the search visibility of Wikipedia.

Regards

Rod



On 1 Sep 2009, at 14:33, Paul Kirk wrote:

> interesting ... but where is the temporal element in the analysis? Is
> not Wikipedia 'older' than EoL and that fact partly explains the
> results?
>
> Paul
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
> Sent: 01 September 2009 13:57
> To: TAXACOM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL
>
> Dear All,
>
> I've written a short blog post looking at what sites Google returns  
> when
> you search for all mammal species by scientific name. Can't say I'm
> surprised by the results, but the magnitude of the difference between
> Wikipedia and the rest is quite striking.
>
> The post is at
> http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-wikipedia-and-eol.html
>   (or http://tinyurl.com/n7ey68 is that gets mangled).
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> DEEB, FBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html