Wikipedia is 20
I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility.<p>Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter.<p>But that was just the start. Wikipedia killed it in SEO when it was easy to do so, but it also did one other thing that most SEO-driven sites (eg: About) didn't do correctly - it cared deeply about the content quality and also resisted to run ads (anyone remember Jason Calacanis' articles on how they are leaving $100m on the table? See [1]). So when Panda came around, Google correctly rewarded Wikipedia with #1 rankings for over 50% of its terms (!!), and Jason Calacanis had to shut down Mahalo which got destroyed by Panda.<p>Wikipedia's dominance continues because it's basically impossible to overcome its lead in inbound links and domain authority. Add to that a surprisingly under-the-radar company culture which has avoided any major blow ups despite its community wielding so much leverage over the world's education and having to make a lot of difficult calls on a daily basis.<p>Well done.<p>[1] <a href="https://calacanis.com/2006/10/28/wikipedia-leaves-100m-on-the-table-or-please-jimbo-reconsider/" rel="nofollow">https://calacanis.com/2006/10/28/wikipedia-leaves-100m-on-th...</a>