Wiki143:Featured article review/Search engine optimization/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by User:Marskell 10:34, 23 June 2008 [1].

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Search engine optimization

Notified WikiProject Internet, WikiProject Business and Economics, User:Jehochman, User:Ohnoitsjamie, User:Cumbrowski, User:ZimZalaBim, User:Bill Slawski, and User:zzuuzz.

This article seems to be a generally good article overall, but is lacking in several ways:

• 1(a): The prose is decent, but not of an FA standard. I notice redundancies, unclear phrasing, choppy sentences, style issues, and unnecessary use of the passive voice in many areas of the article. To give an example, in the History section, the information on Google seems somewhat disconnected or tangential in places, with some sentences phrased in a way that breaks the flow of the passage. As a second example, the beginning of the "Webmasters and search engines" section is very awkwardly worded and has punctuation issues. Similar problems exist throughout the article.
• 2(c): A fair number of the references for the article fail the guidelines for reliable sources and verifiability. The site Search Engine Watch and its founder are frequently used as references; I believe that these would be considered self-published sources, as would a few other references used in the article. The "Legal precedents" section has a Template:Tl tag. Never mind, didn't see the discussion in its FAC that explains the sources used.
• Link issue: The article is short on internal links in some sections. "As a marketing strategy" has only two internal links and the body of "Preventing indexing" has only three. I see many places where links could be added. Not as big of a problem as it looked like at first.

The prose problems appear to be the most significant issue, though the others should be fixed as well. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 22:59, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Pyrospirit, please follow the instructions at the top of WP:FAR to complete all notifications and post them back to here. Did you read the FAC where there was a clear discussion of the sourcing in this article ??? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, without specific examples of prose issues and lack of links, your objections aren't actionable (WP:OVERLINKing is to be avoided). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

My fault, I didn't see the earlier discussion of the sources. I've crossed that out, along with the part about internal links. It could probably use some more links here and there, but it's not a widespread issue and isn't especially problematic. I still have concerns about the prose; I'll post some examples in a few minutes. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 02:55, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Considering the principle editor is recused,[2] and prose issues are the only concerns, is this a good use of FAR or could this work be accomplished on the article talk page? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

You're right, this probably is too minor for FAR since links and sources aren't a problem. I'll bring up the prose issues on the talk page. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 03:30, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I've left a note for Marskell. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.