Just saw this on the Live Search Blog.

It seems that from now on when a search query returns a result from Wikipedia they will actually expand the description beyond the standard couple of lines of text that you, me and everyone else gets and instead they’ll be including the first paragraph from the Wiki article along with a handful of extra links to deeper content sections within the article.

The example given on the the Live Search Blog is from a search for the term Tikal which shows up as the first organic result in the SERPs.

But a quick (and not particularly scientific) test shows that results from Wikipedia are now extended regardless of their positions within the results.

Just look here at a handful of other searches:

A search for Virtual Reality has the Wiki result at number 6 but still gets the extended listing.

Searching for Queensland brings it in second expanded entry and all.

Even the query Video Games which doesn’t display a result from Wikipedia until the third page still has the fully expanded listing.

SEOs have often complained in the past about Wikipedia’s dominance of search results because of the site’s massive inbound link profile and perceived authority in ranking algorithms (especially Google’s) but now there’s the additional favouritism shown by Live Search to contend with.

Will Microsoft continue to expand search result listing for other authority sites in the same way?  Or will this be a one-off thing that they’re doing just for Wikipedia’s results?

What do you think?  How do you feel about Wikipedia not just ranking so highly for so many queries but now taking up even more real estate on the SERPs as well?  Is this  good thing?  Or a bad one?  Do you think any of the other engines will follow suit?  Would you prefer it if they just gave Wikipedia their own little box out result on the side of the page and left the rest of the SERPs as normal?

Let me know in the comments.