Google or Wikipedia - Which is Your First Stop?

dwarfking asks: "Over the last several months I have noticed that more and more often, when I am searching for information on the web, I find myself starting at Wikipedia instead of Google. It used to be that the first hit on many of my Google searches linked to Wikipedia articles, so I started going there first. I've found that except for searching for current events, by starting with Wikipedia I get a good explanation of the topic of interest and the pages generally have links to other good resources that are right on topic (without the need to scroll through dozens of hits). Are others of you seeing similar shifts in your search usage and if so, do any of you think this could become a trend for the larger community? If so, then what could that potentially mean for Google?"

Comments

Google wins

[crazyjeremy]

Although Wikipedia is certainly a top ranking search engine result for many subjects, it is certainly not an exhaustive resource. It's an encyclopedia. As such, I find that when I search google that sooner or later (usually 1 - 3 tries) I find keywords that give some sort of appropriate results. If I am searching for specific subjects that I know may be found in an encyclopedia, I start with google again and search "site:wikipedia.org somesubject" or even "wikipedia somesubject". The latter search is because many people will have an informative page on their own website with more/different information than wikipedia, but they will reference wikipedia for some of their text.

Good question, but personally I still always start with google. Unless I'm simply in wikipedia research mode, then I can sit for hours in front of the thing going from one article to the next...

Googlepædia

[AberBeta]

I do both at once!

With a Firefox extension called Googlepedia, I "Google" happily, and it'll include (if found) a relevant Wikipedia page to the side of the search results.

Re:Google

[masklinn]

I've bound the Wikipedia search to the "wp" keyword in Firefox, ergo when I type "wp something", Firefox starts a wikipedia search for "something" (I've also bound Uncyclopedia to "up", but I use it slightly less often)

Re:Googlepædia LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

Googlepedia link

Re:Google

[aymanh]

Create a keyword search for Wikipedia and you will be able to search it by directly typing your search terms in the location bar. Here is how to do it:

1. Go to Wikipedia.org.
2. Right-click in the search field, and select "Add a keyword for this search...".
3. Enter a keyword for your search. Personally, I use "wp".
4. That's it, now try it by typing "wp starcraft" into your location bar for example.

This feature isn't limited to Wikipedia by the way, and I believe a previous version of Firefox used to ship with several keyword searches by default, including Wikipedia.

reference mode: answers.com; others: google

[Bad Boy Marty]

If I want some sort of traditional reference material, the first best stop for me is http://answers.com/.

If I'm looking for almost anything else, I go directly to http://google.com/.

Re:Google still wins

[SilentOneNCW]

Where my usage has really changed is when my first choice of keywords for Google leads to too many wrong responses (too much verbiage about Paris Hilton when looking for hotels in Paris). When this happens I now often look for a Wikipedia article to scan for better keywords to feed to Google. This is a very slick way of quickly narrowing the scope of the search.

Try searching for paris -hilton...

Ta-Dah!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=paris+-hilton&sta rt=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8