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

Neither

[acvh]

I switched to Ask.com for searches about six months ago. Their first results page generally contains:

First: either a WIkipedia link or a link to the "official" site, depending on what you searched for. Ask is good at identifying the nature of the search.
Second: about 10 relevant links, with no junk, no ad site, no sales sites.

The downside is that Ask's advertising links are rather obtrusive; they put them at the top and bottom of the page, with a subtly different background color.

My switch from Google was based on a combination of performance and politics: I don't really miss it.