Econsultancy published an interesting look at the results of a study conducted by Intelligent Positioning that examined why Wikipedia commands such powerful search marketing equity and, as a result, has such a dominant position on page one of Google for just about every search term.
I love the summary that Econsultancy pulled together as to WHY Wikipedia dominates Google results across so many competitive keyphrases:
6. Trust and credibility
7. High text-to-HTML ratio (similar to #1 above); the site relies on content, not flash, images or flashing GIFs to carry its message
8. Fresh content: There is a consistent new publishing going on each day, each hour, each minute easy
9. Lack of banner advertising; Wikipedia has resisted the lure of easy ad money in favor of maintaining an editorial leadership position
Please have a read of both the Econsutlancy review and the original study, if you'd like, and tell us what you think.