Blame Wikipedia

Next on my hit list is Wikipedia. The community-created encyclopedia has a page on search engine marketing that says:
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.
There�s no mention of SEO in that definition. SEM is made out to be all paid, paid, paid.
I�ve no doubt that many people have turned to Wikipedia to understand what SEM is about, especially since it ranks in the top results at Google for terms like �sem� and �search marketing� and �search engine marketing.� Many of them assume, especially with Google�s effective endorsement of Wikipedia by ranking it so well, that the page must be factually correct.
In reality, a small edit made without supporting documentation transformed an alternative definition of SEM into the current one that Wikipedia promotes. I found this accident so alarming, so indicative of the mess that Wikipedia can make, that I felt it deserved a special detour: How Wikipedia Turned PPC / Paid Search Into SEM.
Still, SEO wasn�t completely excluded at Wikipedia from SEM until the middle of last year, so it can�t take the full blame. Plus, as my other piece explains, it did make sense for Wikipedia to offer an alternative view. It probably contributed to the shift, but it also reflected a change that was happening for other reasons.

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