Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia website. This website is one of the top websites on the internet and also this website is a nonprofit .org website. Wikipedia’s aim is to give its readers unbiased content that does not promote or put down any organization, company or individual’s identity but only places before its audiences the hard facts about the given topic. It does not profit from its website and does not allow any advertisements or sponsors for its website.
However this website is one of the most viewed websites in the world and most internet users use this website regularly. Also the search engine results of Wikipedia pages are very highly ranked by all. Many advertising companies are trying to take advantage of this popular website.
Questionable Wikipedia Entries
Many advertising companies are using questionable and fishy methods to include promotional language in the Wikipedia entries related to them. Many of these firms get caught by Wikipedia editors and employees monitoring the entries and pages on Wikipedia. These ad companies are trying to promote themselves on Wikipedia using many underhand methods as many people read Wikipedia which is an excellent marketing opportunity for them even if it is dubious in nature.
Methods
Many advertising companies managed to get articles about their companies. This happened because the Wikipedia contributors writing the articles on Wikipedia had close connections to the company and wrote articles that were favorable to the company. These articles had obvious promotional content in the pages and if any person read these articles on Wikipedia they would be reading a more promotional pitch of the company rather than the facts about the company. The editors of Wikipedia often get complaints from readers if they spot promotional content. Also these editors themselves monitor the Wikipedia pages to be sure that no company, individual or organization is using Wikipedia to promote themselves on the internet. These firms took a chance hoping that the pages would skip the attention of Wikipedia monitors.
Another method used is using keywords or industry words and concepts in the article of the organization so that it gets higher ranked on Wikipedia search results when these words are searched by individuals.
As seen above the advertising companies have used questionable methods to promote themselves by using Wikipedia which is an encyclopedia that is completely unbiased and strives to give the true facts to the users of Wikipedia.
