Ironically the first link I find to britannica.com after an OSE search was from the Wiki page about the EB. In other metrics, the site is decent with a 93 domain authority but you’re right the link’s just aren’t there on the scale of Wiki (althought it’s not a bad place to start from).

EB needs a new strategy of free v premium content. More than that, it needs a strategy. Currently the site is ugly from the free POV – ads sit incongruously and the navigation is terrible. On the homepage I get an ad for the SEN – I’m not looking for entertainment, I’m looking for knowledge (there’s also car insurance and Maltesers).

Thats the free stuff – which is marked with authors so could be well placed for a future dip into rel=”author” (assuming any of the professors have G+). There’s this suspicious statement in the top right that “members get more” but the landing page doesn’t seem to offer much more. I found my article, I read it, I learned. What more would I want from an encyclopedia?

I guess, what I mean by all this is that there is a real and important place for the EB in the future. Wiki needs competitors and the differentiator is the EB’s vetting process – perfect for people who want a more definitive or academic article. Yet no-one is graduating university with the EB in their minds as an online resource – that is a huge culture change to acheive without changing any of the EB’s core values. Good luck to them.