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To get a company Wikipedia page, the business needs significant coverage in reliable, independent sources, such as news stories and books. Even so, people tied to the brand should not create a Wikipedia page on their own. Instead, they disclose the tie and let volunteers decide. Here are the rules, and why Wikipedia matters to AI.
In short
- For Wikipedia, notability is not years in business or revenue. What counts is independent news stories, books and studies that cover the company in depth.
- Press releases, sponsored content and the brand’s own site do not prove notability, under the rules of both the English and Portuguese versions.
- Anyone paid to edit, such as an employee or an agency, must disclose employer and client, under the Wikimedia Terms of Use.
- In GPT-3, Wikipedia was only 3% of the training mix, but training went through it 3.4 times, more than any other dataset.
Can a company have a Wikipedia page?
Yes, a company can have a Wikipedia page if it is notable under Wikipedia’s criteria. Wikipedia is not a directory, so a company Wikipedia page only stays up when independent sources have already covered the business in depth. Also, the published text does not belong to the company, and any editor can change it within the rules.
English Wikipedia’s notability guideline for organizations warns that only a small percentage of organizations meet the requirements. Similarly, the conflict of interest policy of the Portuguese-language Wikipedia says that whoever creates an article gains no right to control the text.
Do years in business and revenue count?
Not on their own. The English guideline says that employee counts, revenue, raised capital and company age do not make coverage significant. Likewise, the Portuguese-language criteria separate notability from fame and importance. So a 20-year-old company may stay off Wikipedia, while a younger one covered in news stories may get in.
What is notability, and which sources count?
For a company Wikipedia page, notability means significant coverage in reputable, independent sources. Significant means the source covers the company in detail, not in passing. Independent means the author has no tie to it, as with journalists, book authors and researchers.
The English guideline adds that at least one source must be regional, national or international. Meanwhile, the notability criteria of the Portuguese-language Wikipedia treat “sources” as plural: at least two, and the same outlet counts as one. Also, a mention in a directory or a list is not enough.
| Source | Does it count? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| News story that analyzes the company | Yes | Independent, in-depth coverage |
| Book or study about it | Yes | Reliable secondary source |
| Press release or a story copied from it | No | The company’s own text |
| Sponsored post or paid article | No | Paid content |
| Company site, blog and social media | No | Not independent |
| Founder interview | No | Primary source |
| “Best of” ranking or directory | No | Trivial mention |
| Funding or launch news | No | Routine coverage |
That is why notability is built in the press, not on Wikipedia. New data, such as original research, helps earn coverage, and taking that data to journalists is the job of digital PR.
How do you handle a conflict of interest on Wikipedia?
Anyone tied to the company has a conflict of interest on Wikipedia, such as owners, partners, employees, agencies and PR firms. The rules do not ban taking part, but they discourage editing the article directly. So the path is to disclose the tie and propose changes on the talk page, so that editors with no tie to the company decide.
The Portuguese-language conflict of interest policy calls these edits extremely discouraged, and PR edits particularly frowned upon. The same policy says that producing promotional articles on behalf of clients is strictly prohibited. In addition, administrators can block accounts that only promote a company, after a warning.
Who must disclose a tie to the company?
Anyone paid to edit must disclose it. Under the Wikimedia Terms of Use, paid editors must disclose their “employer, client, and affiliation” on their user page, on the talk page or in the edit summary. According to the Wikimedia FAQ, an employee who edits the employer’s article discloses the employer. Meanwhile, someone who works for an agency discloses both the agency and the client.
The duty also covers talk page requests and Wikidata. Because the Portuguese-language Wikipedia has not listed an alternative policy on Meta, the general rule of the Terms applies there. An owner who edits without pay still has a financial conflict. In that case, the Portuguese-language policy strongly discourages editing and recommends disclosing the tie.
How to create a company Wikipedia page without breaking the rules?
To create a company Wikipedia page without breaking the rules, people with a tie do not publish the article directly. First, check that the sources prove notability. Then disclose the tie and send the proposal to volunteer review. The way to create a Wikipedia page differs between the English and Portuguese versions.
- Check whether the article already exists in English and in Portuguese, and whether the company already has a Wikidata item.
- List the independent sources: at least two news stories, books or studies about the company.
- Disclose the tie on your user page, with employer and client when there is payment.
- On English Wikipedia, submit a draft through Articles for Creation (AfC) instead of creating the page directly.
- On Portuguese-language Wikipedia, present the idea on the talk page of a related article or a WikiProject, as the conflict of interest policy advises.
- Write in a neutral tone, using only what the sources support.
- Accept the outcome: volunteers may decline the draft and even delete the article.
English Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guideline asks editors with a tie, including paid ones, to use AfC. Also, when you do not create a Wikipedia page on your own, you protect the brand, because the media has exposed companies that edited their own articles.
How to request a fix on your company Wikipedia page?
To fix a fact on your company Wikipedia page, open the article’s Talk tab, disclose the tie and explain what is wrong. Next, point to a reliable source that shows the correct fact. Then editors with no tie to the company review the request and decide whether to change the text.
On English Wikipedia, the request uses the Edit COI template, and a reply can take anywhere from a day to several months. Once notability is established, the organizations guideline accepts company sources, with care, for some facts.
The Portuguese-language policy allows people with a conflict only uncontroversial edits, such as fixing spelling and reverting vandalism. Also, anyone may remove unsourced defamatory material. On the other hand, the policy forbids removing criticism that has a reliable source.
When ChatGPT repeats the old fact, however, fixing the article is only one part. The guide on what to do when ChatGPT is making up information about your company shows how to trace the error and check whether it goes away.
What can a company do on Wikidata?
Wikidata is the structured database of Wikimedia, with facts such as founding date, headquarters and website. Under Wikidata’s notability policy, an item qualifies if it links to a page on a Wikimedia project, such as a Wikipedia article. It also qualifies if it describes a clearly identifiable entity with serious, public references. So the bar is lower than on Wikipedia.
Even so, Wikidata policy requires paid users to disclose who pays them. In addition, the Wikidata page for people with an item about themselves asks for a source for each new statement. It also says not to remove sourced statements. On your own site, Organization schema with sameAs points to the official pages of the company on other sites.
Why does AI rely so much on Wikipedia?
AI uses Wikipedia in three ways: the training of models, answers that rely on web search and the databases that Google consults. But no study we found measures how much a Wikipedia article raises the number of citations a brand gets.
In a post about a drop of roughly 8% in human visits, Wikimedia summed up the weight of the encyclopedia:
“Almost all large language models (LLMs) train on Wikipedia datasets.”
Marshall Miller, Wikimedia Foundation (2025)
What does training data show?
AI companies rarely detail the data behind their most used models, as the GPT-4 technical report shows. So the public numbers come from older models with published methods. In GPT-3, English Wikipedia was 3% of the training mix, but training went through it 3.4 times, more than any other dataset. That is because OpenAI sampled the datasets it saw as higher quality more often.
In LLaMA, from Meta, Wikipedia made up 4.5% of training, in 20 languages including Portuguese, and training went through it about twice. Also, Meta used pages cited as references on Wikipedia to train the filter that chose which web pages went into training.
Does Wikipedia show up in AI answers with search?
Yes, and prominently in the US. In the September 2026 ranking from Ahrefs, English Wikipedia has 7.0% of the summed citations of the 50 domains ChatGPT cites most. Ahrefs sells the tool that collects the data. In Brazil, however, the studies gathered in the guide to the sources most cited by ChatGPT put Wikipedia behind social networks and communities.
On Google, the Knowledge Graph is rooted in public sources such as Wikipedia, according to the 2012 announcement. In 2025, Google said that AI Mode can tap into that graph. In addition, Wikimedia Enterprise, the commercial arm of the foundation, announced Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI and Perplexity as partners in 2026, alongside Google.
That is why Wikipedia is part of GEO work. Still, a Wikipedia page does not guarantee citations, and missing from third-party sources is only one of the 8 reasons AI does not cite a brand. To see whether Wikipedia is among the sources AI cites about your brand, follow the protocol for measuring mentions and citations.
What should a company avoid on Wikipedia?
Almost every company mistake on Wikipedia has the same root: treating the article as a marketing channel. After all, each one can get the text deleted, the account blocked or the company into a public debate.
- Create a Wikipedia page without disclosing the tie: the Terms of Use require paid editors to disclose, and the English Wikipedia policy bars editors who do not disclose from editing.
- Hire someone who promises to guarantee the page: an English Wikipedia information page warns that these guarantees are lies.
- Ask a colleague to publish the text: on English Wikipedia, both the writer and the publisher must disclose.
- Delete criticism that has a reliable source: the Portuguese-language policy does not allow it.
- Use a press release or your own site as proof: they are not independent sources.
- Get into an edit war: administrators can block the account, sometimes permanently.
What we found in 9 pages on how to get a company Wikipedia page
We ran 6 searches in Portuguese on how to get a company onto Wikipedia. Then we analyzed the 9 Portuguese-language pages that came up in them. Seven explain that notability depends on independent sources, but only three say that paid editors must disclose the tie.
Two tell the company itself to create a Wikipedia page without any mention of conflict of interest, and two offer paid help. Three point to AfC without saying that it belongs to English Wikipedia. Four cite AI as a reason, but none brings data with a published method.
Frequently asked questions
It costs nothing to open an account, edit Wikipedia or create a Wikipedia page draft. The people who charge are paid editors and agencies, which must disclose employer and client under the Wikimedia Terms of Use. None of them can guarantee that the company Wikipedia page stays up, because volunteer editors decide.
Yes, a Brazilian company can have a page on English Wikipedia if it meets the English notability guideline. That guideline asks for independent sources, with at least one regional, national or international source. Sources do not need to be in English, according to the Articles for Creation page. However, each Wikipedia language edition decides on its own whether an article stays.
It can ask, but the community decides. The English conflict of interest guideline warns that editors may keep the article even if the company requests deletion. Likewise, the Portuguese-language policy says that content does not go away just because someone dislikes it.
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Main sources
- Wikipedia, Notability (organizations and companies) (2026).
- Wikipedia, Conflict of interest (2026).
- Wikimedia Foundation, Terms of Use, section on paid contributions without disclosure (2026).
- Wikipedia, conflict of interest policy of the Portuguese-language version (2026).
- Wikipedia, notability criteria of the Portuguese-language version (2026).
- Wikidata, Notability policy (2026).
- Brown et al., Language Models are Few-Shot Learners, the GPT-3 paper (2020).
- Wikimedia Foundation, New User Trends on Wikipedia (2025).
