The Wikipedia page of a company generates a lot of traffic, usually more than an official website does. Its top position in search engines and its quality content makes it the starting point of most web searches (see AI can’t kill Wikipedia). The content of a Wikipedia page has a tendency to be repeated on social networks and news websites, making it an epicenter of reputation.

Professional Wikipedia editors sell editorial services – they modify Wikipedia pages – but they rarely show you what lies under the hood, the data that flows through Wikipedia’s veins. Traditional marketing segmentation cannot be actionated on Wikipedia (user demographics, remarketing, social signals, …) which makes it a poor tool for marketing and sales purposes, but it is still a crowded place where opinions get shaped. When it comes to public relations and “influencers’ influence”, Wikipedia should not be ignored.

There are many different layers of Wikipedia to unpeel and monitor:

• A page’s modifications and comments.
• A page’s top editors.
• The echo between press articles and Wikipedia content (idem for social networks).
• Traffic from Wikipedia to your website.
• A page’s existing and new incoming links.
• Competitors’ pages.
• …

The monitoring of Wikipedia should not be limited to your page. There is no conventional way to monitor Wikipedia, the setup depends entirely on your goals. The purpose is to create and track strategic KPIs to collect data that can be merged with a company’s pool of data. Monitoring Wikipedia will boost your risk and opportunity charts with enhanced insight, influence your PR approach, and fine-tune your crisis emergency settings.