How often do you review your PPC ad copy? Not just analyzing the performance of each asset within the ad platform, but also reviewing your ads in the context of how they appear next to competitor ads?
Are you using the exact same messaging as your competitors? Does your offer stand out from theirs? Which ads are bland and generic, and which provide concrete calls to action and compelling selling points?
Let’s walk through several tips for writing paid search copy that stands out in search results and converts customers for your brand.
1. Think about how assets will appear together, not just individually
When you’re writing Responsive Search Ads, it’s easy to fall into the trap of simply filling in all 15 headline options and all four descriptions.
However, if each headline essentially says the same thing with slightly different wording, your ad copy will appear bland and repetitive in the SERP when two or three headlines are shown together.
For instance, if this example ad showed the following, it would be less helpful:
“Project Management Software – Trusted by 3 Million Users”
If you want to test multiple headlines with slightly different wording, pin them to the same position so the ad platform can rotate between them, but not show both at the same time. Zoho appears to be doing this by using both “Preferred by 3 Million Users” and “Trusted by 3 Million Users” as options.
The visibility of the ad strength rating looms over every Google Ads account. Don’t let chasing an Excellent score consume your focus.
Focus more on making sure each headline and description speaks accurately to your benefit points than on including the maximum number of each. Pinning may negatively impact ad strength, but as discussed above, it can help make your messaging cleaner.
3. Use AI as a partner, but don’t blindly outsource all your copy to AI
Google and Microsoft make ad writing easy, generating text for all your ad assets with a single click. Your LLM of choice can also spin out halfway acceptable copy with the right prompt.
These tools can provide a helpful starting point, but they shouldn’t be the final result you use without careful review. Don’t skip the human touch when reviewing the copy you get back.
Problems can range from copy that doesn’t reflect your brand voice to flat-out inaccuracies. In industries such as finance and healthcare, where legal guidelines matter, AI-generated copy may not be compliance-friendly.
It’s not enough to claim that you’re the “Best Local Contractor” in your area. Think of concrete ways to reinforce superlative statements like this.
For instance, “Voted Best Local Contractor by [News Outlet]” provides a tangible source for the claim. Mention awards or rankings from organizations your prospective customers are likely to recognize.
Incorporating numbers, where possible, also helps bring credibility to your messaging claims.
Years in business. If you’ve been around a long time, stating this positions you well against newer players in the market.
Number of customers served.
Number of locations for physical businesses.
Number of connectors for a software product.
Number of active users.
Number of trips booked.
Number of properties managed.
One word of caution: If you include numbers that are likely to change over time, such as how many customers you serve, revisit them periodically and update them for accuracy. Ranges are fine, too, for example, “Over 500 Locations.”
5. Highlight ease of effort
In today’s busy culture, saving time and hassle can be one of your biggest selling points. Think about where the product or service you’re promoting can reduce effort for your target audience.
Open an account in 10 minutes.
Complete your application online.
Schedule a same-day appointment.
Conduct your consultation remotely.
Repairs done while you wait.
Make sure you can back up what you promise here, and consider whether current customer reviews reflect the experience your claims describe.
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6. Offer a ‘free’ hook
Just like free samples at Trader Joe’s, mentions of “free” in ad copy immediately draw a user’s attention. What can you offer as a free entry point for potential customers?
Free demo.
Free trial.
Bonus for new customers.
Free college application.
Free quote.
Free content, such as ebooks, whitepapers, or webinars.
Whether it’s a trial of a software product or a free visit to your home to assess what’s needed for pest control, this type of offer can be what convinces prospects to fill out a form and enter your sales funnel.
For instance, Strayer University highlights, “Pass 3 Bachelor’s Courses, Earn 1 Tuition Free.” In an age of skyrocketing college costs, that’s an attractive reason to click and learn more.
7. Turn off automated assets
If you’re not careful with your account settings, Google and Microsoft can automatically generate assets, from ad copy to sitelinks, without your review. That can create concerns for compliance and for overall messaging accuracy.
Make sure you turn off this option at the account level to avoid issues with unwanted copy or unexpected links to irrelevant pages.
8. Highlight pricing where it makes sense for your brand
When people are comparison shopping, they usually want quick visibility into cost. Of course, providing pricing may be more or less straightforward depending on your business, and price isn’t always a primary selling point for every brand.
If you’re in an industry where showing a cost is simple, including it in your ad copy can help. When your pricing is competitive, mentioning it helps you stand out.
If your pricing is higher than most competitors, showing that cost may help filter out people you don’t want clicking your ads. For example, lower-priced competitors may cater to small businesses, while your company serves enterprise-level organizations that need more robust solutions.
If you offer multiple price tiers or clearly defined costs for different services, consider using price assets to highlight them. For example, you might break out cost by number of users for a SaaS product.
9. Mention locations in regional campaigns
If your business serves a particular region, mention locations in your ad copy to create a local connection.
For example, if you just opened a new store in Buckwheat County, including “Now Open in Buckwheat County” can help appeal to users in that area. Your ad will likely stand out against national brands running generic messaging.
You can set up ad groups based on regional keywords and tweak your headlines to reference those locations. Also consider using location insertion to dynamically include regions in your copy.
Now that we’ve covered ways to improve your paid search copy, take a moment to review your current ads.
Where can you better think through how assets combine?
What value propositions aren’t you mentioning yet?
How can you tailor your wording more directly to customers’ concerns, such as by highlighting pricing or regions?
Start creating new copy variants and testing them to improve your PPC performance.
Your ad doesn’t compete in isolation — it competes in the SERP
Paid search success isn’t about filling every field or chasing an Excellent ad strength score. It’s about how your messaging appears next to competitors in the SERP.
Review your ads in context. Look at how assets combine. Strengthen value propositions, highlight what makes you different, and test new variations.
If your ad sounds like everyone else’s, it won’t stand out. Make sure it does.
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Advertisers contacting Google Ads support may now need to grant explicit authorization before they can even submit a help request — giving a Google specialist permission to access and make changes directly inside their account.
Here’s what’s happening. Users are first routed to a beta AI chat. If they opt to submit a support form instead, they must tick an “Authorisation” box. The wording allows a Google Ads specialist, on behalf of the company, to reproduce and troubleshoot issues by making changes directly in the account.
The fine print is clear. Google doesn’t guarantee results. Any adjustments are made at the advertiser’s own risk. And the advertiser remains solely responsible for the impact on campaign performance and spending.
Why we care. The required checkbox shifts more responsibility onto advertisers at a time when automation and AI already limit hands-on control. If support makes changes, the performance and spend risk still sits with the advertiser.
Between the lines. This creates a trade-off between speed and control. Granting access could accelerate troubleshooting, but it also opens the door to account-level changes that may affect live campaigns — without any assurance of improved outcomes.
The bottom line. Getting support may now mean temporarily handing over the keys — while keeping full accountability for whatever happens next.
First seen. This new caveats to getting support was spotted by PPC specialist Arpan Banerjee who shared spotting the message on LinkedIn.
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Demand Gen marks a shift in Google Ads toward visual advertising beyond keywords and text. Relying on traditional strategies when testing it wastes budget, hurts performance, and limits opportunity. To succeed, you have to think more like a social advertiser than a search advertiser.
At SMX Next, Industrious Marketing owner Jack Hepp explained why many businesses struggle with demand gen campaigns — especially in B2B and lead generation — while also sharing insights relevant to ecommerce.
Understanding the Shift: From Intent to Interruption
Demand Gen reflects Google’s shift from intent-first search advertising to visual, discovery-based campaigns.
Instead of targeting users actively searching for your service, you reach them as they scroll through YouTube, Gmail, or Discovery feeds.
This changes your approach: visual creative becomes the new keyword, replacing traditional targeting.
Common misalignments in Demand Gen strategy
Applying outdated search strategies can lead to failure with Demand Gen. The four main mistakes:
Expecting bottom-of-funnel CPAs from mid-funnel traffic.
Using overly broad, “spray and pray” targeting.
Running bland, generic creative.
Not knowing how to optimize without negative keywords.
Success requires a social advertising mindset.
Campaign structure: Understanding the hierarchy
Demand Gen uses a two-level structure.
Campaign-level settings control broad parameters like bidding strategy, conversion goals, and device targeting.
Ad group–level settings control audiences, locations, and channels.
Each ad group learns independently—insights don’t transfer—allowing precise audience segmentation with tailored creative.
Creating interruption-based creative
You must stop their scroll within 3-4 seconds. Your creative must capture attention immediately, speak to a specific pain point, and present your solution.
Unlike search ads — where users are actively looking for you — Demand Gen interrupts browsing, so your message must be instantly compelling and problem-focused.
Aligning visuals to the customer journey
Match your offer to audience readiness.
Cold audiences need educational content like free guides or diagnostic tools.
Warm audiences respond to case studies, webinars, and comparison tools.
Hot audiences are ready for demos and direct purchase offers.
Misaligning them — like pushing demos to cold audiences — guarantees failure from the start.
The power of problem-focused creative
Generic ads with stock photos and basic headlines get scrolled past. Winning creative uses bold headlines, striking visuals, and problem-focused messaging.
For example, “43% of cyberattacks target small businesses” speaks to a specific pain point, making the ad stand out and prompting engagement instead of a scroll.
Bidding and budget strategies
Demand Gen uses campaign goals rather than traditional bidding strategies: conversion-focused, click-focused, or conversion–value–focused.
Aim for 50+ conversions per month and budget 10–15x your target CPA to build enough data.
For click-based bidding, set budget based on desired traffic volume and target CPC.
Demand Gen is highly data-reliant, so hitting these thresholds is critical to performance.
Can Demand Gen work with small budgets?
Yes, with strategic planning.
Focus on mid- or upper-funnel audiences and optimize for MQLs instead of bottom-funnel conversions. This helps you reach 50+ monthly conversions for data density, even with smaller budgets.
Align your goals, targeting, and budget to generate enough conversion data.
Building the right audience
Avoid two extremes:
Audiences that are too broad (billions of impressions) where Google can’t identify your target.
Audiences too narrow (a few thousand impressions) where you can’t build data density.
The sweet spot: start with custom segments based on search terms or competitor websites, then layer in lookalike segments and strategic first-party data. Avoid optimized targeting at first — it works best to expand already successful campaigns.
The role of creative in targeting
Your creative shapes who Google targets. The people who engage with your ads teach Google who to show them to next.
Performance peaks when your creative speaks to your ideal customer profile. Align messaging to the buyer’s stage — cold audiences need different messaging than hot prospects.
Strategic exclusions
Use exclusions surgically, not broadly. It’s tempting to exclude like negative keywords, but over-excluding shrinks your audience too much.
Focus only on clear non-converters (e.g., specific age groups, locations, or audiences you know won’t respond). Give Google room to find engaged users within your parameters, rather than narrowing to the point of ineffectiveness.
Optimization: Where to focus
Without negative keywords, optimize through three levers: creative, audience, and offer. Test multiple formats (video, image, carousel) and styles (UGC, testimonials, problem-focused messaging). Continuously refine what works with new hooks and data points.
Test offers to match audience readiness — cold audiences need educational content, while hot audiences need direct CTAs.
Prioritize post-click optimization: improve landing pages, strengthen tracking with CRM integration, and ensure clean data feeds Google’s learning.
Real-world case study
A telecommunications company targeting B2B managed IT services drove strong results by aligning all three elements.
Offer: An interactive quiz showing businesses how managed IT could reduce costs.
Targeting: Custom segments based on proven search terms and competitor website visitors.
Creative: Problem-focused messaging about cybersecurity threats to small businesses.
Results:
$10 cost per MQL.
3.8% conversion rate.
40% of quiz takers became SQLs.
20% increase in total SQLs.
Key takeaways
As you plan your next campaign:
Match your creative to your customer and their stage in the journey.
Target the right audience at the right point in that journey.
Test and optimize creative and offers to find what resonates and drives action.
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Most SEO professionals give Google too much credit. We assume Google understands content the way we do — that it reads our pages, grasps nuance, evaluates expertise, and rewards quality in some deeply intelligent way. The DOJ antitrust trial told a different story.
Under oath, Google VP of Search Pandu Nayak described a first-stage retrieval system built on inverted indexes and postings lists, traditional information retrieval methods that predate modern AI by decades. Court exhibits from the remedies phase reference “Okapi BM25,” the canonical lexical retrieval algorithm that Google’s system evolved from. The first gate your content has to pass through isn’t a neural network. It’s word matching.
Google does deploy more advanced AI further down the pipeline, including BERT-based models, dense vector embeddings, and entity understanding systems. But those operate only on the much smaller candidate set traditional retrieval produces. We’ll walk through where each technology enters the process.
This matters for content optimization tools like Surfer SEO, Clearscope, and MarketMuse. Their core methodology — a mix of TF-IDF analysis, topic modeling, and entity evaluation — maps directly to how that first retrieval stage scores documents. The tools are built on the right foundation. The problem is that most people use them incorrectly, and the studies backing them have real limitations.
Below, I’ll explain how first-stage retrieval works and why it still matters, what the research on content scoring tools actually shows — and doesn’t show — and most importantly, how to use these tools to produce content that earns its way into the candidate set without wasting time chasing a perfect score.
How first-stage retrieval works and why content tools map to it
Best Matching 25 (BM25) is the retrieval function most commonly associated with Google’s first-stage system.
Nayak’s testimony described the mechanics it formalizes: an inverted index that walks postings lists and scores topicality across hundreds of billions of indexed pages, narrowing the field to tens of thousands of candidates in milliseconds.
Here’s what matters for content creators:
Term frequency with saturation: The first mention of a relevant term captures roughly 45% of the maximum possible score for that term. Three mentions get you to about 71%. Going from three to thirty adds almost nothing. Repetition has steep diminishing returns.
Inverse document frequency: Rare, specific terms carry more scoring weight than common ones. “Pronation” is worth roughly 2.5 times more than “shoes” in a running shoe query because fewer pages contain it.
Document length normalization: Longer documents get penalized for the same raw term count. All of these scoring algorithms are essentially looking at some degree of density relative to word count, which is why every content tool measures it.
The zero-score cliff: If a term doesn’t appear in your document at all, your score for that term is exactly zero. Not low. Zero. You’re invisible for every query containing it.
That last point is the single most important reason content optimization tools have value. If you write a comprehensive rhinoplasty article but never mention “recovery time,” you score zero for that entire cluster of queries, regardless of how good the rest of your content is.
Google has systems like synonym expansion and Neural Matching — RankEmbed — that can supplement lexical retrieval and surface additional documents. But counting on those systems to rescue a page with vocabulary gaps is a risky strategy when you can simply cover the term.
After first-stage retrieval, the pipeline gets progressively more expensive and more sophisticated. RankEmbed adds candidates keyword matching missed. Mustang applies roughly 100+ signals, including topicality, quality scores, and NavBoost — accumulated click data over 13 months, described by Nayak as “one of the strongest” ranking signals.
DeepRank applies BERT-based language understanding to only the final 20 to 30 results because these models are too expensive to run at scale. The practical implication is clear: no amount of authority or engagement signals helps if your page never passes the first gate. Content optimization tools help you get through it. What happens after is a different problem.
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What the research on content tools actually shows
Three major studies have examined whether content tool scores correlate with rankings: Ahrefs (20 keywords, May 2025), Originality.ai (~100 keywords, October 2025), and Surfer SEO (10,000 queries, July 2025). All found weak positive correlations in the 0.10 to 0.32 range.
A 0.24 to 0.28 correlation is actually meaningful in this context. But these numbers need serious qualification. Every study was conducted by a vendor, and in every case, the vendor’s own tool performed best.
No study controlled for confounding variables like backlinks, domain authority, or accumulated click data. The methodology is fundamentally circular: the tools generate recommendations by analyzing pages that already rank in the top 10 to 20, then the studies test whether pages in the top 10 to 20 score well on those same tools.
The real question — whether following tool recommendations helps a new, unranked page climb — has never been rigorously tested. Clearscope’s Bernard Huang put it directly: “A 0.26 correlation is not the brag they think it is.”
He’s right. But a weak positive correlation is exactly what you’d expect if these tools solve the retrieval problem — getting into the candidate set — without solving the ranking problem — beating competitors once there. Understanding that distinction is what makes these tools useful rather than misleading.
Why not skip these tools altogether?
Expert writers are terrible at predicting how their audience actually searches. MIT Sloan’s Miro Kazakoff calls it the curse of knowledge. Once you know something, you forget what it was like before you knew it.
Clearscope’s case study with Algolia illustrates the problem precisely. Algolia’s writers were technical experts producing genuinely excellent content that sat on Page 9. The problem wasn’t quality. The team was using internal jargon instead of the language their audience actually typed into Google.
After adopting Clearscope, their SEO manager Vince Caruana said the tool helped the organization “start writing for our audience instead of ourselves” by breaking out of internal vocabulary. Blog posts moved from Page 9 to Page 1 within weeks. Not because the writing improved, but because the vocabulary finally matched search behavior.
Google’s own SEO Starter Guide acknowledges this dynamic, noting that users might search for “charcuterie” while others search for “cheese board.” Content optimization tools surface that gap by showing you the actual vocabulary of pages that have already demonstrated retrieval success.
You can do everything a tool does manually by reading top results and noting common themes, but the tools automate hours of SERP analysis into minutes. At $79 to $399 per month, the investment is justified when teams publish frequently in competitive niches or assign work to freelancers lacking domain expertise. For a solo blogger publishing once or twice a month, manual analysis works fine.
What about AI-powered retrieval?
Dense vector embeddings are the same core technology behind LLMs and AI-powered search features. They compress a document into a fixed-length numerical representation and can match semantically similar content even without shared keywords. Google uses them via RankEmbed, but they supplement lexical retrieval rather than replace it.
The reason is computational: A 768-dimensional embedding can preserve only so much information, and research from Google DeepMind’s 2025 LIMIT paper showed that single-vector models max out at roughly 1.7 million documents before relevance distinctions break down — a small fraction of Google’s index. Multiple studies, including findings on the BEIR benchmark, show hybrid approaches combining BM25 with dense retrieval outperform either method alone.
The bottom line for practitioners is clear: The AI layer matters, but it sits lower in the pipeline, and the traditional retrieval stage your content tools map to still does the heavy lifting at scale.
This is where most guidance on content tools falls short. The typical advice is “use Surfer/Clearscope, get a high score, rank better.”
That misses the point entirely. Here’s a framework built on how these tools actually intersect with Google’s retrieval mechanics.
Prioritize zero-usage terms over everything else
The highest-leverage action these tools identify is a term with zero mentions in your content. That’s a term where your retrieval score is literally zero, and you’re invisible for every query containing it. Going from zero to one mention is the single most impactful edit you can make. Going from four mentions to eight is nearly worthless because of the saturation curve.
When reviewing tool recommendations, filter for terms you haven’t used at all. Clearscope’s “Unused” filter does this explicitly.
Ask yourself: Does this missing term represent a subtopic my audience would expect me to cover? If yes, work it in naturally. If the tool suggests a term that doesn’t fit your angle — a beginner’s guide doesn’t need advanced technical terminology — skip it.
A high score achieved by forcing irrelevant terms into your content is worse than a moderate score with genuinely useful writing. As Ahrefs noted in its 2025 study, “you can literally copy-paste the entire keyword list, draft nothing else, and get a high score.” That tells you everything about the limits of chasing the number.
Be selective about which competitor pages you analyze
Default settings on most tools pull from the top 10 to 20 ranking pages, which frequently includes Wikipedia, major media outlets, and enterprise sites with overwhelming domain authority. These pages often rank despite their content, not because of it. Their term patterns reflect authority advantage, not content quality, and they’ll skew your recommendations.
A better approach: Look for pages that rank for a high number of organic keywords on mid-authority domains.
Ahrefs’ data shows the average page ranking No. 1 also ranks in the top 10 for nearly 1,000 other keywords. A page ranking for 500 keywords on a DR 35 site has demonstrated broad retrieval success through vocabulary and topical coverage, not just backlinks. Those pages contain term patterns proven effective across hundreds of separate retrieval events, not just one.
In most tools, you can manually exclude specific URLs from competitor analysis. Remove the Wikipedia pages, the Amazon listings, and any high-authority site where you know authority is doing the work. What’s left gives you a much cleaner picture of what content actually needs to include.
Use tools during research, not during writing
The worst workflow is writing with the scoring editor open, watching your number tick up in real time. That pulls your attention toward keyword insertion instead of communicating expertise. Practitioners reporting the worst experiences with these tools tend to be the ones writing to a live score.
The better workflow: Run the tool first. Review the term list. Identify gaps in your outline, especially terms with zero usage that represent subtopics you should cover. Then close the tool and write for your reader.
Run it again at the end as a sanity check. Did you miss any major subtopics? Add them. Is the score significantly lower than competitors? That’s information worth investigating. But your job is to build the best page on the internet for this topic, not to match a number.
Understand that content is one player in the game
NavBoost, RankEmbed, PageRank-derived quality scores, site authority, click data, and engagement signals all operate on the candidate set that first-stage retrieval produces. Content optimization gets you through the gate. It doesn’t win the race.
If you optimize a page, push the score to 90, and don’t see ranking improvements, that doesn’t mean the tool failed. It likely means the other ranking factors — backlinks, domain authority, and click signals — are doing more work for your competitors than content alone can overcome.
This is especially important when scoping on-page optimization projects. Be honest about what content changes can and can’t accomplish. If a page is on a DR 15 domain competing against DR 70+ sites, perfect content optimization is necessary but probably not sufficient.
When a client asks why they’re not ranking after you pushed their score to 95, the answer shouldn’t be “we need more content.” It should be a clear explanation of which part of the problem content solves — retrieval — which parts it doesn’t — authority, engagement, brand — and what the next strategic move actually is.
Focus on going beyond, not just matching
The philosophy behind these tools — structure your content after what top results cover — is sound. You need to demonstrate topical relevance to enter the candidate set. But the goal isn’t to produce another version of what already exists.
The pages that rank broadly, the ones that show up for hundreds or thousands of keywords, consistently do more than match the competitive baseline. They add original research, practitioner experience, specific examples, or angles the existing results don’t cover.
Surfer SEO’s December 2024 study supports this. It measured “facts coverage” across articles and found that top-performing content by keyword breadth had significantly higher coverage scores than bottom performers.
The content that ranks for the most queries doesn’t just include the right terms. It includes more information, more specifically. Use the tool to establish the floor of topical coverage. Then build the ceiling with value the tool can’t measure.
A note on entities
Google’s Knowledge Graph contains an estimated 54 billion entities. Entity understanding becomes most powerful in the later ranking stages where BERT and DeepRank process final candidates.
Some content tools are starting to incorporate entity analysis, but even the best versions present entities as flat keyword lists, missing the relationships between entities that Google’s systems actually evaluate.
Knowing that “Dr. Smith” and “rhinoplasty” appear on your page is different from understanding that Dr. Smith is a board-certified surgeon with published research at a specific institution. That relational depth is what Google processes, and no content scoring tool currently captures it.
Treat entity coverage as an additional layer beyond what keyword-focused tools measure, not a replacement for the fundamentals.
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Retrieval before ranking
Content optimization tools work because they’ve reverse-engineered the vocabulary of the retrieval stage. That’s a less exciting claim than “they’ve cracked Google’s algorithm,” but it’s the honest one, and it’s supported by what the DOJ trial revealed about Google’s infrastructure.
Use these tools to identify missing terms and subtopics. Be skeptical of exact frequency targets. Exclude high-authority outliers from your competitor analysis. Prioritize zero-usage terms over further optimization of terms you’ve already covered.
Understand that a perfect content score addresses one stage of a multi-stage pipeline and use the competitive baseline as your floor, not your ceiling. The content that ranks the broadest isn’t the content that best matches what already exists. It’s the content that covers what already exists and then goes further.
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SerpApi is asking a federal court to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, arguing the company is misusing copyright law to restrict access to public search results.
The motion was filed Feb. 20, according to a blog post by SerpApi CEO and founder Julien Khaleghy.
Google sued SerpApi in December, alleging it bypassed technical protections to scrape and resell content from Google Search.
The details: SerpApi argues Google is improperly invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to Khaleghy:
The DMCA protects copyrighted works, not websites or ad businesses.
Google doesn’t own the underlying content displayed in search results.
Accessing publicly visible pages isn’t “circumvention” under the statute.
Google’s complaint alleged SerpApi:
Circumvented bot-detection and crawling controls.
Used rotating bot identities and large bot networks.
Scraped licensed content from Search features, including images and real-time data.
SerpApi said it doesn’t decrypt systems, disable authentication, or access private data. Khaleghy said SerpApi retrieves the same information available to any user in a browser, without requiring a login.
Khaleghy also argued Google admitted its anti-bot systems protect its advertising business — not specific copyrighted works — which he said undermines the DMCA claim.
SerpApi cites the Ninth Circuit’s hiQ v. LinkedIn decision warning against “information monopolies” over public data. It also cites the Sixth Circuit’s Impression Products v. Lexmark ruling to argue that public-facing content can’t be shielded by technical measures alone.
Catch up quick: The lawsuit follows months of escalating legal fights over scraping and AI data use.
Oct. 22:Reddit sued SerpApi, Perplexity, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy in federal court, alleging they scraped Reddit content indirectly from Google Search and reused or resold it. Reddit claimed the companies hid their identities and scraped at “industrial scale.” Reddit said it set a “trap” post visible only to Google’s crawler that later appeared in Perplexity results. Reddit is seeking damages and a ban on further use of previously scraped data.
Dec. 19:Google sued SerpApi, alleging it bypassed security protections, ignored crawling directives, and scraped licensed Search content for resale. SerpApi responded that it operates lawfully and that accessing public search data is protected by the First Amendment.
By the numbers: SerpApi claims that, under Google’s interpretation of the DMCA, statutory damages could theoretically total $7.06 trillion — a figure it said exceeds U.S. GDP. The number reflects SerpApi’s calculation of potential per-violation penalties, not an actual damages demand.
What’s next. The case now moves to the court’s decision on whether Google’s claims can proceed.
Why we care: The outcome could reshape how SEO platforms, AI tools, and competitive intelligence software access SERP data. A win for Google could make third-party search data harder or riskier to obtain. A win for SerpApi could strengthen arguments that publicly accessible search results can be scraped and collected.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/web-design-creative-services.jpg?fit=1500%2C600&ssl=16001500http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2026-02-23 14:41:132026-02-23 14:41:13SerpApi moves to dismiss Google scraping lawsuit
Wikipedia is a fascinating experiment. It’s a community-built encyclopedia that’s always in motion. It runs on volunteer energy and openly shared infrastructure, and it’s closer to an open-source project in how it’s built than a traditional encyclopedia book. Anyone can write, edit, and debate what belongs on a page.
And that’s the twist. The “truth” on Wikipedia isn’t handed down by a single editor or community member. It’s negotiated in public, guided by community standards, citations, and a whole lot of conversation. Contributors don’t so much control a subject’s story as they continually test it. They’re constantly asking questions: What can we verify? What deserves weight? What’s missing?
When you read a Wikipedia article, you’re seeing a current snapshot of a living, evolving community decision.
This whole experiment has scale, too. As of February 6, 2026, the English Wikipedia had 7.13 million articles, and the project spanned more than 340 languages.
If you’re thinking about creating a Wikipedia page for your company, it helps to know what you’re signing up for. Wikipedia isn’t a marketing channel, and it isn’t designed for companies to shape their narrative.
It’s designed to summarize what independent, reliable sources have already said about a company, so not every organization qualifies for a stand-alone article. Wikipedia cautions that only a small percentage of organizations meet the requirements for an article in the first place.
The easiest way to orient yourself with the platform is to keep Wikipedia’s “five pillars” top of mind. Wikipedia is, first and foremost, an encyclopedia. It aims for a neutral point of view, the content is free for anyone to use and edit, editors are expected to be civil, and there are no hard-and-fast rules. It’s just policies and guidelines applied with unbiased judgment.
If your company is genuinely notable by Wikipedia’s standards and you’re willing to play by its guidelines, there’s a real visibility upside in a solid, well-sourced page that holds up over time.
Key Takeaways
Wikipedia isn’t for marketing. If a Wikipedia page reads like company positioning, a feature brochure, or a pricing page, it’ll get rejected, reverted, or flagged. Even if other company pages “get away with it,” you need to focus on creating a deeply researched, informative draft to give strong notability in Wikipedia’s eyes.
Notability = independent coverage. You need multiple strong secondary sources (real reporting with editorial standards). Press releases, paid placements, niche trade mentions, and contributor “interviews” don’t hold up.
Sources drive the outline (and the page). Build your outline from what your credible secondary sources already cover. Possible sections could include a lead, history, high-level operations, leadership, or controversies, if documented. Each company’s outline may look different depending on what information can be strongly sourced. If you can’t source a section cleanly, it doesn’t belong.
Use Wikipedia’s Articles for Creation (AfC) process to avoid conflict of interest (COI) roadblocks. If you’re connected to a company or paid to write a Wikipedia page for them, you must disclose it and lean on the AfC process instead of directly pushing a company page live.
Getting published isn’t the finish line. Volunteers continuously review pages. Expect ongoing edits, scrutiny, and occasional challenges, so monitor a live page and keep it updated with strong, independent citations.
What Are the Benefits of Creating a Wikipedia Page?
The most significant benefit of Wikipedia is its sheer size and reach. It is one of the most visited websites in the world, averaging more than 1.1 billion unique visitors per month.
In addition to the size of its audience, the platform offers other benefits to marketers and company owners:
Credibility via independent validation (earned, not claimed): A live Wikipedia page signals that reliable, third-party sources have covered your organization in a meaningful way. For journalists, partners, investors, and enterprise buyers, this can reduce skepticism during research.
Search and AI visibility (off-page, long-term): Wikipedia tends to surface prominently in search results and is commonly referenced by knowledge systems. A well-sourced page can support progress in how your company appears in search features, AI overviews (AIOs), and large language model (LLM) output, based on what independent sources say, not what a company wants to say.
A neutral orientation page for readers: Wikipedia’s format helps readers quickly understand a company’s basics, including history, products or services, leadership, milestones, and context. The tradeoff is accessible neutrality. Anything included needs support from reliable secondary sources, and promotional language rarely lasts.
Clarity and disambiguation: If your name overlaps with other companies, or your story includes mergers, rebrands, or multiple founders, Wikipedia can help people land on the right entity and timeline.
A durable reference hub: A good Wikipedia page often becomes a stable directory of the strongest independent sources about you, such as press, books, and other reputable coverage, so readers can verify details without relying on your website alone.
Consistency across the web (a quiet multiplier): Wikipedia and related knowledge sources are reused in many downstream places. When the facts are clean, cited, and consistent, it can improve how your company is represented across third-party profiles and information panels over time.
A Wikipedia page is rarely a conversion engine, and it isn’t a place to “own” your story. The value is credibility and discoverability that can compound, but benefits can vary based on the strength of independent coverage and ongoing community scrutiny.
Below, we’ll cover the 10 steps on how to create a Wikipedia page, as well as considerations to keep in mind.
1. Check to See If Your Company is a Good Fit for a Wikipedia Page
Before you think about how to create a Wikipedia page for your company, you need to answer one question:
Would Wikipedia editors consider your company “notable”?
On Wikipedia, “notability” has nothing to do with how compelling your company story is. It means there’s enough independent, reliable coverage about your company that an article can be written from what third parties have already published, without filling in gaps with interpretation, insider knowledge, or marketing claims.
This is also where a lot of brand teams get tripped up. Again, Wikipedia isn’t a marketing channel. It’s not a place to shape messaging or control a narrative. If the only story you can tell is the one you want to tell, the page will be declined during initial submission review or deleted later.
What Notability Actually Looks Like
A company is usually considered notable when it receives significant coverage in multiple reliable sources independent of the company. “Significant coverage” is the key phrase here. Editors are looking for articles that discuss your company in real depth, not quick mentions or short blurbs.
A helpful way to think about it is this: if you can’t outline a neutral article using independent secondary sources alone, you probably don’t have enough notability yet.
Editors typically want coverage that checks these boxes:
Independent: Truly third-party reporting. Not press releases, paid placements, sponsored posts, advertorials, partner blogs, or content your PR team arranged. If a piece exists because the company made it happen, editors tend to discount it.
Significant: More than a passing mention. A funding announcement, product launch blurb, or event listing can be real coverage and still not be enough. The strongest sources are the ones that explain context, impact, history, or controversy in detail.
Secondary: Sources that analyze, summarize, or report on the company from the outside. Primary sources like your website, blog, press page, or social channels can support basic facts in limited cases, but they do not establish notability.
Reliable: Publications with editorial oversight and a reputation for accuracy. Big-name outlets can help, but they are not the only option. Trade and industry publications can be excellent sources when they have real editorial standards and provide in-depth coverage, but you can rarely use them to establish notability.
Multiple and sustained: A single great source is rarely enough on its own. Editors want to see more than one strong source, ideally across time, so the page can hold up after more people review it.
Neutral tone: Even when a source is independent, it can still be weak if it reads like promotion. Glowing profiles, “thought leadership” posts, or contributor content that feels like marketing often carry less weight than staff-reported coverage.
One nuance that matters a lot in practice is that “lots of links” does not equal notability. Companies can appear all over the internet through routine announcements and PR-driven writeups and still fail Wikipedia’s notability test.
What matters is whether independent sources have treated the company as worthy of real, substantive coverage. This also means that magazines and trade publications can’t work as reliable coverage to establish notability. Many industry leaders also run trade organizations, creating a conflict of interest (COI, in Wikipedia’s terms) if their trade publication were to cover their own company or the companies of friends or contributors.
If your company does not meet this bar yet, that’s not a judgment on it. It just means a Wikipedia article is likely premature, and the better move is to wait until there is enough independent coverage to support a neutral, well-sourced page.
A Note on Conflict of Interest (COI)
If you’re writing about your own company (or you’re paid to write for a company), Wikipedia considers that a conflict of interest (COI). That doesn’t automatically ban you from participating, but it does change how you should approach it.
When creating a new page, submit it to Articles for Creation (AfC) to ensure community editors review it properly.
When editing an existing page, you want to create your edits in a Sandbox draft (the Sandbox is a personal workspace where you can safely draft and refine changes to an article before submitting them for public review). Then, you submit that Sandbox draft onto the live Wikipedia page’s Talk page, along with a comment that asks community members to review and collaborate on the edits you suggested. Once a community consensus is reached, you can push those edits or additions live.
It’s also a good idea to disclose your COI connection. Your disclosure should be one of the following:
A statement on your User page.
A statement on the Talk page accompanying any paid contributions.
A statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.
Avoid directly creating or heavily editing an article and stick to Wikipedia’s COI process to request edits for independent editors to review.
Again, this is about expectations. If your team is hoping to just write a draft and hit “publish,” like you do with a blog, you’re going to have a bad time. But if you do have strong, independent coverage from credible outlets, you’ve got a real shot and can move to the next step.
2. Create a Wikipedia Account
Creating an account is a practical next step if you plan to contribute to Wikipedia. While you don’t need an account to read Wikipedia (or even to edit some pages), registering gives you features that make collaboration and transparency easier.
With an account, you can:
Create a User page (a simple profile and a place to draft in a Sandbox).
Use your Talk page to communicate with other editors.
Build an edit history tied to your username (helpful for credibility and continuity).
Work through article creation more smoothly, including drafting and submitting via AfC.
If you add images to your User page, make sure they’re properly licensed. Wikipedia generally accepts only freely licensed uploads.
After that, you’re set up to start editing, drafting, and participating in the community.
3. Contribute to Existing Pages
Quick reminder from earlier: If you’re connected to the company, you’re dealing with a COI. That’s why Wikipedia prefers that company pages undergo independent review before publication.
As a newbie, a good way to get comfortable on Wikipedia is to start by editing existing articles that have nothing to do with your organization. When you spend time improving clarity, tightening wording, and backing up facts with solid sources, you learn how Wikipedia works, and you build a history of helpful contributions.
As you do that, your account may become autoconfirmed. That usually happens automatically after your account has been around for more than four days and you’ve made at least 10 edits to Wikipedia pages that need them. Autoconfirmed status primarily grants a few basic permissions, such as creating pages and editing some semi-protected articles.
Here’s the key point, though: “Autoconfirmed” does not change your COI situation. Even if you can technically publish a page directly, a company-related article should still be written as a draft and submitted through AfC. This is the step that gets you the independent review Wikipedia expects, and it’s the safest, most appropriate route for a company page.
4. Conduct Research and Gather Sources
Before you write a single line of your Wikipedia draft, do the homework. Wikipedia doesn’t prioritize non-source-backed storytelling. The platform only cares about verifiability, meaning every meaningful claim must be backed by a reliable secondary source that an editor can check. Your company story could play well on Wikipedia, as long as there’s enough reliable evidence to back it up.
This is where most company pages fall apart. Not because the company isn’t real, but because the sources are thin, biased, or too “inside baseball.”
Why sources matter so much on Wikipedia
Wikipedia runs on two big rules:
No original research: You can’t “introduce” new facts, even if they’re true, without proper citation. Which leads to the next point…
Cite everything that matters: If it’s notable, controversial, or specific (revenue, awards, history, key dates, acquisitions), you need a secondary source to back it up.
Primary vs. secondary vs. tertiary sources (and how Wikipedia treats them)
Wikipedia breaks sources down into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Here is a look at each and how they play into the strength of your Wiki page:
Primary sources (you): Your website, press releases, investor decks, published reports, filings (e.g., Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), etc.).
Upside: Can work for basic, factual details (launch dates, historical milestones, etc.).
Downside: Biased by default. Editors won’t accept these for “notability” or big claims like “industry leader.”
Upside: Useful for quick confirmation and context.
Downside: Often too shallow to prove notability on their own.
Overall, secondary sources are the most important to your success. By their nature, these sources are pivotal in helping you summarize what experts think about a company or topic in Wikipedia’s voice. Relying heavily on these gives you a really strong case for notability in Wikipedia’s eyes.
What Makes a Good Wikipedia Source?
Good Wikipedia sources cover topics while maintaining editorial standards. Think major publications, local newspapers of record, respected business outlets, and independent industry analysis. If you’re short on that kind of coverage, that’s usually a PR problem, not a Wikipedia problem. Strengthening your digital PR (DPR) efforts can help you earn credible mentions that hold up under editor scrutiny.
But DPR for a Wikipedia use case must be handled carefully. What tends to work is focusing on independent coverage first. This looks like pitching credible story angles to journalists and outlets that genuinely cover your industry, and accepting that they may say no, or cover the story in a way you can’t control.
When an outlet does publish real, editorial reporting, that’s the kind of secondary source Wikipedia editors are more likely to accept.
Reliable Sources at a Glance
After seeing what Wiki editors consider reliable sources, you might be wondering where you even find sources that hit all their criteria. It helps to look at real-world use cases of which sources are best for your company. Here are some of the types of sites you can choose from.
For company pages, the sources that matter most are the ones that provide significant, independent coverage; the kind that demonstrates notability and gives editors something substantial to cite.
Major national/international newsrooms (strongest for notability + facts): Reuters, AP, BBC, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR (news reporting over opinion).
Reputable business and investigative reporting: Deep dives and investigations from established outlets (e.g., ProPublica) can be highly valuable, especially for controversies, legal issues, and accountability reporting.
High-quality trade press with editorial oversight (context-dependent): Useful for industry coverage when it’s independent and more than a product announcement or reposted PR. You cannot use trade press as a primary indicator of notability, though.
Books from reputable publishers: Especially helpful for founders, company history, and industry impact when written by independent authors and published by established presses.
Government and major non-governmental organization (NGO) reports (within remit): Strong for regulatory actions, enforcement, public contracts, or formal assessments (but not a substitute for independent secondary coverage).
Medical/health claims (only when relevant): For biomedical statements, prioritize high-quality secondary sources like systematic reviews and authoritative guidelines (MEDRS standard), not individual studies or marketing claims.
Check out Wikipedia’s Perennial Sources list to see which sources have a good community track record because they all meet a high level of fact-checking and editorial standards. But remember, the sources featured in this list are still contextual; it’s not a whitelist.
Non-reliable Sources
To paint a clearer picture, here are some of the sources you should avoid:
Self-published/user-generated content (UGC): Personal blogs, Substack/Medium posts, self-hosted sites, most social media.
Press releases/advertorial: Company press rooms, PR wires; these are fine to state that an announcement occurred, not to establish third-party facts or notability.
Sensational/tabloid sources: Outlets known for gossip/sensationalism; poor for verifying facts.
Anonymous forums and crowdsourced threads: Message boards, comment sections, most Reddit/4chan/Discord posts.
Wikipedia views these types of sources as weaker because they aren’t research-backed, trustworthy, or credible. The common thread is that they undergo minimal editorial oversight (if any) or, in Reddit’s case, most of the content is UGC and self-published.
5. Research Your Competition
Like many things when it comes to Wikipedia, researching your competitors is fine if you do it the right way. As you start your research, view your competitors’ pages through the lens of what Wikipedia editors ultimately want.
The challenge here is that Wikipedia isn’t perfectly consistent. Some company pages are old, lightly monitored, or haven’t been updated to match today’s standards.
When someone says, “But other pages include feature lists and product tier breakdowns,” that doesn’t really matter. Editors don’t treat “other pages do it” as a justification. They judge your page on whether it reads like an encyclopedia entry and whether it’s backed by independent, reliable sources.
General Competitor Research Rules
Use competing Wiki pages to answer questions like:
What’s the typical structure for a company page in your category? Take note of the typical section titles. (We’ll dive into this next.)
What kind of claims survive without getting reverted? (Neutral, sourced, non-promotional.)
What sources are doing the heavy lifting on pages that stay live?
A “Wiki-safe” Research Method
Pick 3–5 competitors with live pages, then audit them like an editor would:
Scan the citations first. Are they mostly independent, secondary news coverage, press releases/company sites, or paid placements?
Check the tone. If it reads like a promotional brochure (feature-by-feature, pricing tiers, “best-in-class”), that’s a red flag, even if it hasn’t been removed yet.
Look at the page history and Talk page. Lots of reverts, banners, or sourcing disputes usually mean the page is shaky.
Note what’s missing. If competitors avoid detailed feature lists, that’s usually a sign that those details don’t belong on Wikipedia.
6. Create an Outline
Once you’ve got your sources, your outline has a starting point. The hard part is deciding what belongs.
On Wikipedia, an outline is not “everything you want to say.” It’s you making careful decisions about what independent, reliable sources have actually covered, what they have not covered, and what deserves space without turning the page into a brochure. That takes judgment, and it often takes multiple passes.
The mindset you want is simple: Wikipedia pages are built around what reliable secondary sources already said about the subject. Your outline is how you organize those sourced facts into a structure that editors recognize and are willing to review.
Infobox (quick facts): Founded, founders, headquarters, industry, key people, website, and similar basics. Only include items you can verify.
Lead (opening summary): 2–4 neutral sentences explaining what the company is, where it’s based, what it does at a high level, and why it’s notable. This is not a tagline.
History: Founding and major milestones, expansions, acquisitions, funding or IPO, only if independent sources cover them, and major pivots. Focus on events that third parties actually reported.
Operations/Business (optional, and only if sourced): What the company does at a high level and what markets it serves. Avoid feature-by-feature descriptions and pricing tiers.
Leadership/Ownership (optional): Only if reliable sources discuss executives, ownership changes, or governance in a meaningful way.
Reception/Controversies (only if they exist in sources): Reviews, notable criticism, legal issues, regulatory actions, all written neutrally and backed by sources.
See also / References / External links: References do the heavy lifting; external links are usually minimal (often just the official site).
Using Your Sources to Build the Outline
Start with your strongest independent secondary sources and work outward. As you read through them, you’re identifying what the coverage actually emphasizes.
As you review sources, pull out:
Events they cover (those become history sections)
Claims they support (those become lead and operations sections)
Any recurring themes across sources (those become section headings)
Each major section in your outline should be supported by multiple secondary sources, not a single mention. Also, keep an eye on the length as you draft. Wikipedia discourages overly long articles unless the amount of independent coverage truly warrants it. If a section or topic isn’t discussed in depth by reliable secondary sources, it usually doesn’t belong at length in the article.
If you focus on covering the topic from an encyclopedic angle and you leave out anything that feels like marketing, you will give your draft a much better chance of surviving review.
7. Write a Draft of Your Wikipedia Page
Take your time as you write a draft of your Wikipedia page from your outline. You want your content to be source-backed, thorough, thoughtful, and genuinely useful, giving readers the information they came for.
At this stage, it’s best to write your draft in a Wikipedia Sandbox. As mentioned earlier, this is a personal workspace where you can draft safely, revise freely, and share the link with others for informal feedback without accidentally publishing anything live.
While a Wikipedia page can support your broader visibility, the platform’s purpose is encyclopedic and impartial. Anything that reads as emotional, salesy, or promotional is likely to be flagged and can lead to rejection later in the process.
Aim for short, direct sentences that stick to verifiable facts. And those facts need strong secondary sources. For example, if you write, “Spot ran to the big oak tree yesterday,” that claim would need a source. Not just any source, but a credible, independent secondary source that Wikipedia considers reliable.
It’s also critical to remember you’re writing on behalf of Wikipedia. Aka, you’re writing in Wikipedia’s unbiased, impartial, and neutral voice.
Here are some examples to show what this looks like in practice:
Example 1: Product Description
Promotional: “XYZ Software is a revolutionary, industry-leading platform that empowers businesses to achieve unprecedented productivity gains. With its cutting-edge AI technology and intuitive interface, XYZ transforms the way teams collaborate, delivering exceptional results that exceed expectations.“
Neutral: “XYZ Software is a project management platform that combines task tracking, team messaging, and file sharing. The software is used by businesses to coordinate work across departments.[1][2]“
Example 2: Company History
Promotional: “Founded by visionary entrepreneur Jane Smith, the company quickly rose to prominence as a game-changer in the industry. Through relentless innovation and unwavering commitment to excellence, it has become the trusted choice for Fortune 500 companies worldwide.“
Neutral: “The company was founded in 2015 by Jane Smith in Seattle.[3] It launched its enterprise tier in 2019 and rebranded from “TaskFlow” to its current name in 2021.[4][5]“
Wikipedia also defines “promotional” language differently. It’s more than simply using words like “revolutionary” or “legendary.” Factually correct statements can still be considered “promotional” in a Wikipedia editor’s eyes if they meet certain structure and emphasis criteria:
Long, comprehensive feature inventories.
Plan/tier breakdowns that resemble packaging (“Free vs. Premium vs. Enterprise”).
Performance claims that read like sales positioning.
Details that feel like purchase guidance (pricing, quotas, storage limits, admin entitlements).
Let’s talk about specs and features for a second. If your company is well-known for a particular product or service, it can be tempting to include a specification or feature list on your Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, that can cause problems with Wikipedia for several reasons.
Here’s why:
Wikipedia isn’t a manual or catalog: Wikipedia tries to avoid becoming vendor documentation. Specs and feature matrices belong on the company site, in the documentation center, in release notes, or on third-party comparison sites, not in an encyclopedia.
Specs change constantly:Feature sets, tiers, storage limits, and admin/security capabilities change frequently. Wikipedia content must remain stable and verifiable over time. Highly granular spec content becomes outdated quickly and attracts disputes.
It’s hard to verify neutrally:If the only source for a feature or tier is the vendor’s own site or press release, Wikipedia considers that primary sourcing; useful for limited factual verification, but not ideal for describing capabilities in detail or making value claims.
“Undue weight” and imbalance:Even accurate feature lists can give a product more prominence than independent sources do. Wikipedia tries to reflect external coverage: if reliable third parties don’t treat a feature as notable, Wikipedia typically won’t either.
What a Company’s Wikipedia Draft Should Look Like
Much like sourcing, it’s hard to imagine what an acceptable draft should look like, given all of Wikipedia’s guidelines. Here’s a brief rundown of what a solid draft should look like when you’re done:
A clear, high-level description of what a company is (one paragraph, not a feature catalog).
A history/timeline of major milestones (launches, renames, major releases) backed by independent sources.
Widely covered integrations/partnerships only when reported by reliable third parties.
A short, selective “features” summary only for capabilities that independent sources treat as notable and cover in-depth.
8. Upload Your Page into the Article Wizard
Once your Sandbox draft is in good shape, move over to the Wikipedia Article Wizard. The Wizard is the guided tool that helps you move what you wrote from your Sandbox into Wikipedia’s Draft space, which is where new articles are typically prepared before they go live.
For company-related pages, the key takeaway is that the Wizard is the structured path to getting your draft into the right place so it can be submitted for independent review.
9. Submit Your Article for Review
Now that your draft is in Draft space, you’re ready for the step that triggers formal evaluation by the community. Submit your draft through Articles for Creation by clicking “Submit for review.” This is when your draft enters the AfC queue, and a volunteer reviewer takes a look.
The timeline can range from a few weeks to a few months, depending on backlog and whether the reviewer requests changes. It’s also common for drafts to be declined at first, with feedback you’ll need to address before approval.
At NPD, we’ve found that sticking with AfC is the best practice for companies lookingto go live. Even though autoconfirmed accounts may have the technical ability to publish directly, that path often creates more friction for company-related topics. AfC sets expectations for independent review from the start and helps reduce avoidable issues related to COI and other Wikipedia guidelines.
10. Continue Making Improvements
Once your page is accepted, the work is not really over.
Wikipedia is editable by anyone, so changes can happen at any time. Some edits will be helpful, some will be mistaken, and some may reflect a negative point of view. The best approach is to keep an eye on the page so you can understand what is changing and respond appropriately, usually by suggesting improvements on the Talk page or updating the article with strong, independent sourcing.
As the page gets more visibility and gains traction on Google and LLMs, focus on accuracy and neutrality rather than “updating marketing messaging.” Wikipedia is not the place for routine product updates, but it is the right place to reflect significant, well-covered developments when reliable third-party sources have written about them.
You should also plan for the possibility that your draft will be declined. That is common, especially for company-related topics. If it happens, do not get discouraged. Read the reviewer’s comments carefully, make the requested changes, and resubmit when you have addressed the specific issues that kept the draft from being accepted.
FAQs
Should I build a Wikipedia page for my company?
A Wikipedia page can be a meaningful credibility asset, but it isn’t a fit for every company. The deciding factor is whether there’s enough independent, reliable secondary coverage to support a neutral article. If you can’t outline the page using third-party sources alone, it’s usually too early.
If your company does qualify, the value tends to be indirect: stronger brand legitimacy, clearer “who you are” context in search results, and more consistent entity information across the web. It’s less about immediate conversions and more about long-term visibility and trust signals that can compound.
Yes. Creating, publishing, and maintaining a company page is challenging because Wikipedia is community-reviewed and built around strict expectations: neutral tone, verifiable claims, and high-quality sourcing. You also have to plan for ongoing edits and scrutiny after the page goes live.
The opportunity is achievable if you have strong independent coverage and treat the process as encyclopedic documentation rather than company messaging.
How do I know if my Wikipedia page will be published?
There’s no guaranteed way to know. Even well-prepared drafts can be declined, revised, and resubmitted, especially for company topics.
Your best indicators are practical: you have multiple independent sources with significant coverage, your draft reads neutrally (not like marketing), and you submit through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process so reviewers can evaluate it in draft space.
How long will my Wikipedia article be under review before publication?
Review time varies widely. Some drafts are reviewed quickly, but it’s also common for company-related submissions to take weeks (or longer) depending on backlog and how many revisions are needed. A decline doesn’t mean “never”; it usually means “not yet” or “needs stronger sourcing and a more neutral rewrite.”
Conclusion
If you’re looking to increase traffic, improve your search everywhere visibility, or build credibility, Wikipedia can be part of the equation. But it’s not a marketing channel, and it isn’t built for companies to shape their narratives. It’s a community-edited encyclopedia that summarizes what independent, reliable sources have already said about you.
Where Wikipedia can help is in discovery and trust signals. A stable, well-sourced page often shows up prominently for company and topic queries, and it can reinforce consistent “entity facts” that search engines and other knowledge systems use to understand companies.
That’s also why Wikipedia often pairs well with entity SEO. When key details about your organization are documented consistently across reputable sources, your company is easier to interpret and surface accurately across platforms, including some LLM-style experiences. Results may vary based on implementation, the strength of independent coverage, and ongoing community review.
As you evaluate whether your company is a good fit for a Wikipedia page, keep in mind that the process is complicated, and it won’t be fully in your control. What matters most is having enough independent, reliable secondary coverage to justify a stand-alone article and being willing to follow Wikipedia’s COI expectations.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2026-02-20 20:00:002026-02-20 20:00:00How to Create a Wikipedia Page for Your Company
Search has changed, and so should your audience personas.
Your audience searches across Google, ChatGPT, Reddit, YouTube, and many other channels.
Knowing who they are isn’t enough anymore. You need to know how they search.
Search-focused audience personas fill gaps that traditional personas miss.
Think insights like:
Where this person actually goes for answers
What triggers them to look for solutions right now
Which proof points win their trust
And you don’t need months of research or expensive tools to build them.
An audience persona is a profile of who you’re creating for — what they need, how they search, and what makes them trust (or tune out). Done well, it aligns your team around a shared understanding of who you’re serving.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through nine strategic questions that dig deep into your persona’s search behavior. I’ve also included AI prompts to speed up your analysis.
They’ll help you spot patterns and synthesize findings without the manual work.
By the end, you’ll have a complete audience persona to guide your content strategy.
Free template: Download our audience persona template to document your insights. It includes a persona example for a fictional SaaS brand to guide you through the process.
1. Where Is Your Audience Asking Questions?
Answer this question to find out:
Where you need to build authority and presence
Which platforms to target for every persona
Which formats work well for each persona
Knowing where your persona hangs out tells you which channels influence their decisions.
So, you can show up in places they already trust.
It also reveals how they think and what will resonate with them.
For example, someone posting on Reddit wants honest advice based on lived experiences. But someone searching on TikTok wants visual content like tutorials or unboxing videos.
How to Answer This Question
Start with an audience intelligence tool that lets you identify your persona’s preferred platforms and communities.
I’ll be using SparkToro.
Note: Throughout this guide, I’ll walk you through this persona-building process using the example of Podlinko, a fictional podcasting software. You’ll see every step of the research in action, so you can replicate it for your own business.
For this example, we’re building out one of Podlinko’s core personas: Marcus, a marketing professional on a one-person or small team team, so he’s scrappy and in-the-weeds.
Pro tip: Start with one primary persona and build it completely before adding others. Focus on your most valuable customer segment (the one driving the highest revenue for your business).
In SparkToro, enter a relevant keyword that describes your persona’s professional identity or core interests.
This could be their job title, industry, or a topic they care deeply about.
I went with “how to start a podcast.” Marcus would likely search for this early in his journey.
The report gives a pretty solid overview of Marcus’s online behavior.
For example, Google, ChatGPT, YouTube, and Facebook are his primary research channels.
But it could be worth testing a few other platforms too.
Compared to the average user, he’s 24.66% more likely to use X and 12.92% more likely to use TikTok.
The report also tells me the specific YouTube channels where he spends time.
He’s watching automation, editing, and business tutorials.
He’s also active in multiple industry-related Reddit communities.
Maybe he’s posting, commenting, or even just lurking to read advice.
Since Marcus uses ChatGPT, I also did a quick search on this platform to see which sources the platform frequently cites.
I searched for some prompts he might ask, like “Which podcast hosting platforms should I use for marketing?”
If you see large language models (LLMs) repeatedly mention the same sources, they likely carry authority for the topic.
And by extension, they influence your persona’s research as well.
Compare these sources to the ones you identified earlier. If they match, you have validation.
If they’re different, assess which ones to add to your persona document.
Here’s how I filled out the persona template with Marcus’s search behavior:
2. What Exact Questions Are They Asking?
Answer this question to find out:
What language to mirror in your content
How to structure content for AI visibility
What content gaps exist in your market
Your buyer persona’s language rarely matches marketing jargon.
Companies might talk about “podcast production tools” and “integrated workflows.”
But personas use more personal and specific language:
What’s the cheapest way to record remote podcasts?
How long does it take to edit a 30-minute podcast?
Knowing your audience’s actual questions reveals the gap between how you describe your solution and how they experience the problem.
And shows you exactly how to bridge it.
How to Answer This Question
Start by going to the platforms and communities you identified in Question 1.
Search 3-5 topics related to your persona.
Review the context around headlines, posts, and comments:
How they phrase questions (exact words matter)
What emotions do they express
What outcomes they’re trying to achieve
Pro tip: As you research, save persona comments, discussions, and reviews in full — not just snippets. You’ll analyze the same sources in Questions 3-5. But through different lenses (challenges, triggers, language patterns). Having everything saved means you won’t need to revisit platforms multiple times.
For example, I searched “how to start a podcast for a business” on Google.
Then, I checked People Also Ask for related questions Marcus might have:
On YouTube, I searched “how to edit a podcast” and reviewed video comments.
Users asked follow-up questions about mic issues and screen sharing.
This gave me insight into language and questions beyond the video’s main topic.
In Facebook Groups, I found users asking questions related to their goals, constraints, and challenges.
It also provided the unfiltered language Marcus uses when he’s stuck.
Now, use a keyword research tool to visualize how your persona’s questions connect throughout their journey.
I used AlsoAsked for this task. But AnswerThePublic and Semrush’s Topic Research tool would also work.
For Marcus, I searched “Best AI podcasting editing software,” which revealed this path:
Which AI tool is best for audio editing? → Can I use AI to edit audio? → Which software do professionals use for audio editing? → How much does AI audio editor cost?
It’s helpful to visualize how Marcus’s questions change as he progresses through his search.
Next, learn the questions your persona asks in AI search.
It tells you the exact prompts people use when searching topics related to your brand.
(And if your brand appears in the answers.)
If you don’t have a subscription, sign up for a free trial of Semrush One, which includes the AI Visibility Toolkit and Semrush Pro.
Since Podlinko is fictional, I used a real podcasting platform (Zencastr.com) for this example.
This brand appears often in AI answers for user questions like:
What equipment do I need to create a professional podcast setup?
Can you recommend popular tools for managing and promoting online radio or podcasts?
You’ll also see citation gaps — questions where your brand isn’t mentioned. These reveal content opportunities.
For this brand, one gap includes:
“Which AI tools are best for recording, editing, and distributing an AI-focused podcast?”
After reviewing all the questions I gathered, I narrowed them down to the top 5 for the template:
3. What Challenges Influence Their Search Behavior?
Answer this question to find out:
What constraints influence their decision-making process
How to anticipate objections before they arise
What kind of solutions does your persona need
Challenges are the ongoing issues driving your persona’s search behavior. These overarching problems shape their decisions to find a solution.
Understanding these challenges can help you:
Position your solution in the context of these pain points
Anticipate and address objections before they come up
Structure your campaigns to speak directly to their limitations
How to Answer This Question
Review the questions you collected in Question 2 to identify underlying pain points.
For example, this Facebook Group post contains some telling language for Marcus’s persona:
Specific phrases highlight ongoing challenges:
“Tech support is no help”
Can’t find an editing software that consistently works”
Now, visit industry-specific review platforms.
Check G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Amazon, Yelp, or another site, depending on your niche.
Look for reviews where people describe recurring frustrations.
Positive reviews may mention what drove a user to seek a new solution. For example, this one references poor audio and video quality:
Negative reviews reveal what users constantly struggle with.
Unresolved pain points often push people to find workarounds or alternatives.
This user noted issues with a podcasting tool, including loss of backups, unreliable tech, and more.
Pay close attention to the language people use. Word choice can signal underlying feelings and constraints.
When someone asks for the “easiest” and “most cost-effective” solution, they’re signaling:
Limited resources
Low confidence
Risk aversion
After reviewing conversations and communities, you’ll likely have dozens of data points.
Copy the reviews, questions, and phrases into an AI tool to identify your persona’s top challenges.
Use this prompt:
Based on these reviews and discussions, identify the five biggest challenges for this persona.
For each challenge, show:
(1) exact phrases they use to describe it
(2) what constraints make it harder (budget, time, skills)
(3) how it influences where and when they search.
Format as a table.
This analysis helped me identify Marcus’s recurring challenges:
4. What Triggers Them to Search Right Now?
Answer this question to find out:
What emotional and situational context should you address in your content
How to structure content for different urgency levels
Which pain points to lead with
Search triggers explain why your audience is ready to take action.
But they’re not the same as challenges.
Challenges are ongoing constraints your persona faces. This could be a limited budget, small team, or skill gap.
Triggers are the specific events or goals that push them to act right now. Like a looming deadline or a competitor launching a podcast.
Understanding triggers helps you reach your persona when they’re most receptive.
How to Answer This Question
If you have access to internal data, start there.
Your sales and customer support teams can spot patterns that push prospects from browsing to buying.
For example, your sales conversations might reveal that one of Marcus’s triggers is urgency. His manager might ask him to improve the sound quality by the next episode, prompting his search.
These spaces are where people describe the exact moments they decide to take action. Aka plateaus, milestones, and failed attempts.
When I searched “podcast marketing” on Reddit, I found a post from someone experiencing clear triggers:
This user has been unable to get a consistent flow of organic listeners despite high-quality content.
Trigger: A growth plateau that pushed him to ask for help.
He’s also trying to hit his first 1,000 listeners.
Trigger: A goal that pushed him to look for solutions.
If you collected a lot of content, upload it to an AI tool to quickly identify triggers.
Use this prompt:
Analyze these community posts and discussions. Identify the specific trigger moments that pushed people to actively search for solutions.
For each trigger, show:
The exact moment or event described (quote the language they use)
The type of trigger (situational, temporal, emotional, or goal-driven)
What action did they take as a result
Format as a table.
After analyzing the content I gathered, I identified the key triggers pushing Marcus to search:
5. What Language Resonates (and What Turns Them Off)?
Answer this question to find out:
Which messaging angles resonate
What tones build trust with your audience
Which phrases trigger objections or skepticism
The words you use can affect whether your persona trusts you or tunes out.
The right language makes people feel understood. The wrong language creates friction and drives them away.
When you know what resonates, you can create messaging that builds trust and motivates your personas to act.
How to Answer This Question
Refer back to your research from Questions 3 and 4.
This time, focus specifically on language patterns in reviews and community discussions.
Look at:
Exact phrases people use to describe success, relief, or satisfaction
Words highlighting frustration, disappointment, and concerns
For example, on Capterra, users praised podcasting platforms that “do a lot” and let them “distribute with ease.”
This language signals Marcus’s preference for all-in-one platforms.
He would likely connect with messaging that emphasizes functionality without complexity.
Next, review the content you previously gathered from community spaces.
In r/podcasting, users like Marcus write with direct, benefit-focused language:
Notice what he values: simplicity and concrete outcomes (“automatic transcripts”).
He’s not mentioning jargon like “AI-powered transcription engine” or “enterprise-grade recording infrastructure.”
Plain language that emphasizes quick results over technical capabilities works best with this persona.
Once you have enough data, use this LLM prompt to identify language patterns:
Analyze these customer reviews and community discussions I’ve shared. Identify:
Most common words and phrases people use to describe positive experiences
Most common words and phrases that signal frustration or concerns
Emotional undertones in how they describe problems and solutions
Create a table organizing these insights.
This analysis revealed the specific language that Marcus reacts to positively (and negatively).
6. What Content Types Do They Engage With Most?
Answer this question to find out:
Content types to prioritize in your content strategy
How to structure content for maximum engagement
What length and style work best for each format
Knowing the content types your audience prefers has multiple benefits.
It lets you create content that captures your persona’s attention and keeps them engaged.
Think about it: You could write the most comprehensive guide on podcast equipment.
But if your ideal customer prefers video reviews, they’ll scroll right past it.
How to Answer This Question
You identified your persona’s most-used platforms in Question 1. Now analyze which content formats perform best on each.
Conduct a few Google Searches to identify popular content types.
You’ll learn what users (and search engines) prefer for specific queries. Look at videos, written guides, infographics, carousels, podcasts, and more.
For example, when I search “how to set up podcast equipment,” the top results are a mix: long-form articles, video tutorials, and community discussions.
But you’ll ideally be able to validate them against real behavioral data.
If possible, survey recent customers to find concrete patterns about their search behavior.
Send a short survey to customers who converted in the last 90 days:
Where did you first hear about us?
Where do you go for advice about [primary pain points]?
What platforms do you use when researching [your product category]?
How do you prefer to learn about new solutions in your workflow?
Once responses come in, look for patterns in how each segment discovers, researches, and evaluates solutions.
Here’s a prompt you can use in an AI tool for faster analysis:
I surveyed recent customers about their search and discovery behavior.
Analyze this data and identify:
The top 3-5 platforms where customers discovered us or researched solutions
Common pain points or information needs they mentioned
Preferred content formats for learning about solutions
Any patterns in how different customer segments discover and evaluate us
Highlight the platforms and channels that appear most frequently, and flag any gaps between where customers search and where we currently have a presence.
Next, cross-reference your research against existing data in Google Analytics.
Open Google Analytics and navigate to Reports > Lifecycle > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
Sort by engagement rate or average session duration to see which channels drive genuinely engaged visitors.
Look for high time on site (2+ minutes) and multiple pages per session (3+).
Then, map each platform to the content format that performs best there.
Combine insights from Question 1 (preferred platforms) and Question 6 (preferred formats) to build your distribution strategy.
Here’s what this looks like for Marcus:
9. What Keeps This Persona Coming Back?
Answer this question to find out:
What product features or experiences to double down on
How to position your solution beyond initial use cases
What content to create for existing customers
Winning your audience’s attention once is easy. Earning it repeatedly is the real challenge.
Understanding what keeps your persona engaged is the key to getting them to return.
How to Answer This Question
Review all the audience persona insights you’ve gathered so far to identify recurring needs.
Look at triggers, pain points, content preferences, and community discussions.
Pinpoints problems that can’t be solved with a single article or resource.
This could include:
Tasks they do every week (editing, distribution, promotion)
Decisions they face with each piece of content (format, platform, messaging)
Skills they’re continuously learning (new tools, changing algorithms)
Friction points that slow them down every time
Then, outline the content types that repeatedly solve these problems.
Think tools, templates, checklists, and guides they’ll use repeatedly.
If you don’t want to do this manually, drop this prompt into an AI tool to synthesize your findings:
Based on my audience persona research, here’s what I’ve learned:
Questions they ask: [Paste top questions from Q2]
Challenges they face: [Paste challenges from Q3]
Triggers that push them to act: [Paste triggers from Q4]
Their preferred content types: [Paste formats from Q6]
Identify recurring problems they face repeatedly (not one-time issues).
Use it to guide your content creation, search strategy, and distribution efforts.
Your next move: Expand your visibility further with our guide to ranking in AI search. Our Seen & Trusted Framework will help you increase mentions, citations, and recommendations for your brand.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2026-02-20 17:58:512026-02-20 17:58:51How to Build Audience Personas for Modern Search + Template
