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A guy on a SEO forum told me to use Wikipedia for backlinks and I actually listened
I was reading through some old posts on a webmaster forum back in March and this one user kept insisting Wikipedia links were the holy grail. He said just find a page where your site adds value as a citation and drop it in. Well I spent about 4 hours adding a link to a trucking industry page and it got removed within 48 hours because they flagged it as spam. Turns out Wikipedia has this whole editorial review process that guy conveniently left out. Has anyone else ever wasted time chasing a backlink source that sounded too good to be true?
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west.henry20d agoTop Commenter
that's a rough one, man. that stray cat comparison is pretty spot on, especially with the scratches part. i have to ask, what made you keep going back to that recipe blog thing after the first warning? i know for me, after getting burned like that i just close the tab and move on, i don't have the patience to fight with wikipedia editors over a link. sounds like you really put some time into it though, which makes it sting even more. i guess we all learn the hard way that those big sites have their walls up for a reason.
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laura_wright21d ago
Oh boy, does this bring back memories! I remember back in like 2014 when I thought Wikipedia backlinks were going to save my little recipe blog. I tried adding a citation to my grandma's cookie recipe on some food history page and got slapped with a warning from a Wikipedia mod within hours. They even left me a note on my talk page about "external link policies" and I still don't fully understand what I did wrong. The whole thing made me realize that chasing backlinks from big sites is a lot like trying to pet a stray cat (you know, you think it'll be easy but you end up with scratches and no real reward).
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yeah I read somewhere Wikipedia's like the one site that actually hates backlinks lol
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