Ask HN: Is Wikipedia SEO broken in other languages?

4 points by thiht 3y ago ↗ HN

In the last hour I searched in French for "laine de verre" (glass wool), "pompe à chaleur" (heat pump) and a few others, and the Wikipedia link is nowhere to be found on the first page. If I make the same searches in English, the English Wikipedia page is the first result.

I honestly always expect Wikipedia to be the first result for these basic searches.

Is there a way to report this to Wikipedia so that they can try to fix their referencing?

1 comment

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achairapart 3y ago ↗

I'm not sure 100%, but Google seems to produce different results by different locales (and probably also based on your actual location).

What if you try:

https://www.google.com/search?q=laine+de+verre&hl=fr

https://www.google.com/search?q=pompe+%C3%A0+chaleur&hl=fr

(note the "hl=fr" bit at the end).

I can see in both links the french version of Wikipedia within the first page at least.