| Site | How many times is it the top hit? |
|---|---|
| en.wikipedia.org | 42515 |
| www.birdlife.org | 2125 |
| commons.wikimedia.org | 1522 |
| plants.usda.gov | 1496 |
| species.wikimedia.org | 1487 |
| animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu | 1419 |
| amphibiaweb.org | 851 |
| www.calflora.org | 770 |
| www.fishbase.org | 727 |
| ibc.lynxeds.com | 699 |
| davesgarden.com | 659 |
| www.arkive.org | 510 |
| ukmoths.org.uk | 414 |
| zipcodezoo.com | 368 |
| www.itis.gov | 304 |
| calphotos.berkeley.edu | 294 |
| www.floridata.com | 234 |
| www.planetcatfish.com | 234 |
| www.eol.org | 226 |
| www.arthurgrosset.com | 213 |
The table lists the top twenty sites, based on the number of times each site occupies the number one place in the Google search results. Surprise, surprise, Wikipedia wins hands down.
What is interesting is that the other top-ranking sites tend to be taxon-specific, such as FishBase, Amphibia Web, and USDA Plants. To me this suggests that the argument that Wikipedia's dominance of the search results is because it focusses on charismatic taxa doesn't hold. In fact, the truly charismatic taxa are likely to have their own, richly informative webs sites that will often beat Wikipedia in the search rankings. If your taxon is not charismatic, then it's a different story. This suggests one of two strategies for making taxon web sites that people will find. Either go for the niche market, and make a rich site for a set of taxa that you (and ideally some others) like, or add content to Wikipedia. Sites that span across all taxa will always come up against Wikipedia's dominance in the search rankings. So, it's a choice of being a specialist, or trying to compete with an über-generalist.