what we seem to have here is evidence of a fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service. Three things have happened, in a blink of history’s eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine. Even if you adore the Web, Google, and Wikipedia - and I admit there’s much to adore - you have to wonder if the transformation of the Net from a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one is a good thing. Is culture best served by an information triumvirate?
It’s hard to imagine that Wikipedia articles are actually the very best source of information for all of the many thousands of topics on which they now appear as the top Google search result. What’s much more likely is that the Web, through its links, and Google, through its search algorithms, have inadvertently set into motion a very strong feedback loop that amplifies popularity and, in the end, leads us all, lemminglike, down the same well-trod path - the path of least resistance. You might call this the triumph of the wisdom of the crowd. I would suggest that it would be more accurately described as the triumph of the wisdom of the mob. The former sounds benign; the latter, less so.
Well put. There is much to admire. There’s also a lot to wonder about. Like if you’re just going to end up at Wikipedia, why do you even need Google?
Most searches don’t even really care about other sources. A deep search of the web is only necessary 40% of the time (see slide #25). 30% of searches are navigational; people type in a URL into a search box and then click on that URL in the search results. I’m occassionally guilty of this behavior; I don’t know if it’s because I find it easier to go to the top right of the browser window, or if urls are often ungainly and I want a correction if I mess it up. And another 30% end up at Wikipedia (and this figure ignores Wikipedia’s 20% growth in the last year).
See also Jakob Nielsen on the importance of information variety.
