Can you copy and paste article from Wikipedia for Content?

I'm thinking about creating thousands of webpages using content from Wikipedia... Can you do it? Will it hurt my site if it's the same content as another site?

Thanks y'all!

(From Athens, GA!)

 

I think you can copy the content since it is not copyrighted but it can hurt your sites since Google is pretty good with duplicate content detection. Though I have one site that outranks one of my client's sites with completely copied content. But Wikipedia is pretty well crawled so I'm sure Google would pick up on it.

 

Yes you can, but you shouldn't, it''ll only hurt you.

 

You can. But just think, why people will come to you rather than wiki. Are you providing unique rich content for your visitors.

As for the dupe penalty, there are others things to take into account rather than only copied content. But if you intend to mass copy, that may cause a problem

 

nicknick: I don't want to pick nits, but you're totally wrong about Wikipedia content not being copyrighted. You just need to look at the bottom of each page to see a link to the copyright information and it is mentioned there, too, about the licence under which the content is distributed.

Just because they give you the right to copy and redistribute does not mean that it's not protected by copyright.

web2074: it's best to read the copyright page and maybe read up on the licence. If you like, you can even download the entire database of information from them... just be sure to abide by the allowances.

 

my bad........

 

Wikipedia is open source so copyright is not a problem as long as you put a note on each page linking to the corresponding Wikipedia page. It might save you some work, but copied content is not going to fool anyone. It can also have a negative effect on your PageRank and SERPs.

 

According to the license under which Wikipedia is working your vision is not at all legal and can bring more trouble then benefits. I suggest that you start writing good quality content or outsource this task, anyway, do not use duplicate content that is more then anything licensed.

Regards

 

What if you translate the content manually from for example en.wikipedia.org and use it on a Russian site. Will it count as original content in terms of SERP?

 

I would say it would count as original, if you are the first one to do it. It will place highly in google.ru searches. But if you get a rash of sites doing the same thing, then one will prevail over the other in the end.

 

Another thing to consider is there are a few giants already doing this. May not be worth the effort, unless you are fluent in both languages and can specialize in a niche.

Consider this Google Translate & Wikipedia: 16 Million Words Later from ReadWriteWeb.

 

Thank you for your reply. As for being fluent in both languages, the most important thing it to be fluent in the language you are translating to. I am definitely not fluent in English but my English is good enough to understand just about anything and thus translate it to my main language.

 

Cool! Give it a try. You may want to research a little more and see what type of competition you are up against. I think if you stick to narrow niche, and add to it, you will do okay and will be worth the effort. Good luck!

 

hell no. never... just write what ever you can , but do it yourself

 

the best is try to modify some even you duplicate because wiki do protect with copyright. If you use same content, it will hurt your website quality.

 

continue updating unique and fresh content is effective