There have been many discussions about "how to get backlinks from Wikipedia", and questions on "SEO with Wikipedia".
Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia created and maintained as an open collaboration project by a volunteers and editors around the world. It has been one of the largest, oldest and the most authoritative websites on the internet.
It’s difficult for anyone in almost anywhere to conduct a Google Search search for a term that doesn't list a Wikipedia article.
For these reasons, many think that backlinks from Wikipedia should be one of the most powerful links ever.
They are wrong.
And Google has given some of its thoughts about this to clarify things once and for all.
While it's true that Wikipedia has a lot of traffic and its authority on the web isn't going anywhere. The encyclopedia isn't a place for anyone to piggyback.
While people can indeed contribute to Wikipedia by adding some useful information, and when accepted, they can add their backlink to Wikipedia. Google doesn't see those links as something to rely on.
According to Google's John Mueller, links from Wikipedia not only have no SEO value but also those links "will do nothing for your site" from a Google search perspective.
In fact, or at least most of the time, Mueller said that all people are doing is "creating extra work for the Wikipedia maintainers who will remove your link drops."
It was back in January 2007 that Wikipedia implemented the nofollow directive to all external links in order to reduce spam on the site.
With the directive, Wikipedia simply instructs Google and other search engines that the hyperlink should not influence the ranking of the link's target in the search engine's index
Since that alone isn't stopping web owners and webmasters from putting their links on Wikipedia, Google in saying that its algorithms do not pass any link weight to links in Wikipedia may do the trick better.
Read: Dofollow And Nofollow In Building Links
On a Reddit post, Muller clearly said that:
So not only that putting efforts to earn a backlink on Wikipedia is it a waste of time, webmasters and web owners are also wasting the time of the Wikipedia editors.
But still, that shouldn't be the nail in the coffin.
Any link can worth something, if it is put in the right place.
For example, backlinks that are nofollow don't pass any link juice, but they can still attract visitors if the links are put along compelling content or sentence.
What this means, even if a backlink doesn't appeal Google, it can still increase the number of human visitors. Webmasters and web owners who own websites with backlinks on Wikipedia, should see that the popular encyclopedia is one of the referrals on their analytics.
What Mueller is saying here is that, people shouldn't bother "randomly dropping a link", meaning that it would be a waste of time for anyone to put a link if that link has meaningless content, or doesn't add value to Wikipedia.
It should also be noted that Google is not the only search engine. Others in the competition may consider links from Wikipedia as a signal.
Further reading: Traffic And Backlinks: Friends With Benefits