There are a few external utilities that we can use to check out an article, including Google and Alexa.
Google Test
On Wikipedia, the Google Test is looking something up on Google. This can be:
- a quick and rough (and somewhat controversial) check that a subject has enough references to be worth writing about.
- as a quick and rough check that something actually exists (we get articles about things that don't... personal theories, personal fictions, hoaxes, etc.) See the Check your fiction policy for more.
- as a quick and rough check for copyright. When a new IP or user submits a large chunk of text, it's a good idea to be mildly suspicious and "Google test" a few 10-word or so segments.
When using Google to test for importance or existance bear in mind that this will be biased in favour of modern subjects of interest to people from developed countries with internet access, so it should be used with some common sense. For example, a current popular music group from the United States group will probably have many thousands of google hits before most Wikipedians consider it worthy of inclusion. A similarly important group in a country with less internet presence will have many fewer hits, if any. An important musician of the 1300s might not show up on google at all.
Q. What is the minimum number of matches you should see if a term is not made up? ( 3, 27, 81 )? A couple hundred perhaps! It depends on several things:
- the article's point of view. If narrow, fewer references are required. Try to categorize the point of view, ( whether it is NPOV, or other) eg: notice the difference between Ontology (philosophy) and Ontology (computer science).
- the subject. If it's about some historical person, one or two mentions in reliable-looking texts might be enough; if it's some internet neologism, it may be on 100 pages and might still not be considered 'existing' for Wikipedia's purposes.
- the type of sites you find. Pay attention to whether the sites you see accept submissions. The Urban Dictionary,for example, accepts submissions freely. This is especially important if you suspect an author is self-promoting, or is promoting an idiosyncratic viewpoint. A single internet user can submit the same ideas to message boards and open-submission sites all over the internet.
Further common sense: the google test checks popular usage, not correctness. For example, a search for the incorrect Charles Windsor gives around two orders of magnitude more results than the correct Charles Mountbatten-Windsor.
Also, some topics may not be on the Web because of low Internet usage in certain areas of the world
It should be stressed that none of these applications is conclusive evidence, but simply a first-pass heuristic.
There is another, quite different, reason to Google an article. If the Wikipedia article seems to be of high quality, you can check to see if there are related sites that could be convinced to link to it, to help drive traffic to Wikipedia. Similarly, you can google to look for good sources of further information.
Alexa Test
Although Wikipedia is not a web directory, we can have articles about web sites if they meet the same criteria for encyclopedic interest as other articles.
If you're interested in writing a wikipedia article about a particular web site, just go to Alexa (http://www.alexa.com), and type in the URL. The traffic rank may help you decide whether a site is important enough. Most would agree that we should certainly have articles on top 100 sites, possibly have articles on top 1,000 sites. For a page not in the top 100,000, most would agree that popularity alone would not suffice to justify its inclusion in Wikipedia. The intermediate area is a grey area where opinions differ.
For some websites (e.g., microsoft.com) in the top thousand, a redirect to a broader article may be appropriate: in that case, microsoft.
See also Wikipedia:Web comics for some specific advice related to web comics.