Can a Company Get a Wikipedia Page? The Notability Decision Tree

What is the Notability Decision Tree?

The Decision Tree is a five-gate filter you apply to each source on your media list; a source counts as evidence only if it passes all five. The gates mirror Wikipedia's own rules, so the tree is a practical interface to editorial policy.

1. Enough: do you have several candidate sources, not one viral moment or a single profile? Notability rests on a body of coverage.
2. Independent: was each source written by someone with no stake in you, outside your company, owners, PR agency and ad budget? This gate removes most business coverage.
3. Reliable: does the outlet have editorial standards and a fact-checking reputation? A real newsroom, not a paid contributor platform or a press-release wire.
4. Significant: does the piece cover your company directly and in detail, so that a stranger could write a paragraph from it alone, rather than merely mention you in a list or quote?
5. Sustained: does coverage exist at more than one point in time, ideally from more than one outlet, rather than from a single coordinated burst?

A source that passes all five is strong. One that stops at a gate is borderline, weak or unusable, depending on where it stopped. Assessing eligibility means counting how many strong sources survive.

The core of gates 2-4 comes straight from the General Notability Guideline: a topic is presumed notable when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. For organisations the community expects more, as the organisations and companies guideline states.

You assess the sources, not the company. For the conceptual background, see does your company qualify for Wikipedia; this article is the "how" you can run yourself.

What counts as significant coverage, and what is only a passing mention?

Significant coverage is an article about your company; a passing mention is your name appearing inside an article about something else. The guideline defines significant coverage as coverage that addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content, and it excludes trivial mentions.

• Significant: a 1,200-word profile in a national business paper; an industry analysis where your company is the case study; an investigation in which your firm is the central subject.
• Passing mention: a CEO quote in a trend piece; your logo in a "10 startups to watch" list; one sentence about a funding round; a directory entry.

The trap is that mentions feel like wins. A quote in a major newspaper is good PR, but for Wikipedia it is coverage of a topic in which you served as a source, not coverage of you. The Significant gate removes many of the links companies are proudest of.

Which sources never count for Wikipedia notability?

Press releases, your own channels, sponsored content and routine announcements never count, because none of them is independent of you.

• Press releases and wire reprints. Your words, distributed on your initiative. Outlets that only republish them add nothing.
• Your blog, About page, case studies and white papers. Primary, self-published material. It can support a fact once notability exists but cannot establish it.
• Sponsored content, advertorials and "contributor" or "council" posts. Advertising in a journalist's jacket. The masthead may be famous, but money changed hands.
• Routine announcements. A funding round, a hire, an office opening, an award you applied for. These are expected business news, not in-depth coverage.

Wikipedia's reliable sources policy asks for published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; material you produced, paid for or initiated fails the independence test by definition.

One point US-focused guides miss: the logic is language-neutral. A genuine independent article in Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine or Corriere della Sera carries the same weight as an English-language one, because Wikipedia accepts non-English reliable sources. A paid placement in a regional European outlet is as unusable as an American advertorial. For a deeper treatment see our complete guide to reliable sources.

How do I score my own sources?

Label every link on your list before you count anything; the goal is to find the sources that survive all five gates.

The honest reading is uncomfortable: the links companies send first usually sit in the bottom two tiers. Awards, funding blurbs and bylined columns are weak or unusable. The links that matter are the ones companies forget they have, the unprompted article a journalist wrote because the story was interesting.

For each source ask one question per gate and give 1 for "clearly yes" and 0 for "no or unsure". A source needs 5 out of 5 to count as strong (gate 1 is checked once for the whole list: do you have at least three or four candidates?).

Then count the strong sources:

• 0-1 strong: not eligible yet. Do not commission a page. Earn real coverage first, then return in 6-18 months.
• 2 strong: borderline. A professional review is worth it before drafting; the outcome is genuinely uncertain.
• 3-4 or more strong: eligible for a full assessment. This is where careful source work and neutral drafting pay off.

How many sources are enough?

Wikipedia publishes no fixed number, so anyone quoting an exact count is simplifying. What the policy does say is sober: only a small percentage of the world's organisations meet the requirements, and no company is considered inherently notable. For organisations, reviewers want several sources that are each independent, reliable and substantially about the company, rather than one strong article held up by mentions.

Our working threshold, the point at which we assess eligibility seriously, is roughly three to four sources that pass all five gates, preferably from more than one outlet and across time. It is a minimum evidence base, not a promise of approval. Below it the answer is almost always "not yet".

What we do not promise. Nobody can promise that your company will get a page, that approval is assured, or that a published article is permanent. Wikipedia is run by independent volunteers, and the guideline itself says that significant coverage creates a presumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits an article. A provider claiming a special relationship with editors or administrators is a red flag. What a provider can do is assess sources against policy, tell you the truth about eligibility, draft neutrally, disclose the paid role and monitor the page afterwards.

Does company size or industry matter?

Size does not matter, but industry correlates with how often companies clear the bar. This is the question we hear most: a real, profitable business with real customers surely deserves an entry. Wikipedia's verifiability policy answers that content must be published in a reliable source before it can be added, even if you are sure it is true. Your scale is real, but if no independent source has documented it in depth, Wikipedia cannot verify it, and the no original research policy means an article cannot be built from your own knowledge.

Where companies sit varies by sector. In the WikiBusines Notability Index (our own assessments of organisations, 2018-2026, methodology and data), the share rated low notability ranges widely:

These are our own assessments, not Wikipedia statistics, and a sector's average says nothing about your company: what counts is your own sources. Finance and media attract more independent coverage; crypto and gambling attract less that qualifies. You can look up your sector on the Notability Index, and our sector pages cover technology companies, fintech and healthcare.

Does a notable founder make the company notable?

No. A notable company does not make its founder notable, and a notable founder does not make the company notable. They are assessed under different guidelines and notability does not transfer. A well-known CEO with broad personal press may qualify for a biography while the company does not, and the reverse. Decide which subject you want on Wikipedia, then run the tree on that subject's sources. The paths are compared in company vs founder vs public figure.

What happens after the tree says yes?

Passing the tree means a page is possible, not ready. The disciplined sequence is:

1. Source research and audit. Confirm and strengthen the strong sources. A paid notability audit does this, and its cost is credited toward the project if you continue within one month.
2. Neutral drafting. Write to the sources in a plain encyclopedic register with no promotional language.
3. Transparent disclosure. Declare the paid relationship. Wikipedia's paid-contribution disclosure rules and the Wikimedia Terms of Use require paid editors to disclose their employer, client and affiliation.
4. Submission through Articles for Creation (AfC). Articles for Creation is Wikipedia's review queue for new drafts. Editors with a conflict of interest (COI), which any company or its agency has, are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly and should propose changes through AfC or talk pages.
5. Monitoring. Pages change. Ongoing monitoring catches vandalism, stale facts and deletion nominations early.

If a vendor offers to "handle it quietly", walk away: that is undisclosed paid editing, and it leads to deleted pages and blocked accounts. The full picture is in paid editing, COI and disclosure.

How much does a Wikipedia page for a company cost?

An English-language corporate page starts from €2,400, usually 4-5 weeks, and the first step is the free 10-minute assessment; if the case is unclear, the next step is a notability audit from €490. Price should not be your first question, because eligibility matters more, but the audit is the paid version of the scorecard above: a professional read of whether your sources pass the tree before you pay for drafting. If they do not, you spent a few hundred euros to avoid wasting thousands, and the audit fee is credited toward the page if you proceed within one month. Full ranges for other language editions are in the pricing guide and the cost breakdown; a multilingual rollout changes the maths, as the multilingual strategy explains.

A word on cheap offers: a "guaranteed page" for under €500 is usually a thin draft that gets rejected, undisclosed paid editing that risks a ban, or bait pricing. Our own guarantees rest on defensibility, never on a promised outcome: after publication we monitor the page for 90 days, and if a published page cannot be defended after three attempts within that window, 80% is refunded.

How WikiBusines helps

WikiBusines is a Wikipedia agency; for this question our job is to tell you honestly whether your sources pass, then to build only pages we can defend. Paid editing is always disclosed on Wikipedia in WikiBusines' name, and we never promise that an article will be published.

• Notability audit, from €490. A professional run of your sources through the tree against policy. The fee is credited toward the page if you proceed within one month.
• Wikipedia page creation, from €2,400 for English, 4-5 weeks. Source research, neutral drafting, disclosed submission through AfC, then 90 days of monitoring and guarantee after publication.
• Annual support, from €720 per year, with a 12-month guarantee. Near real-time monitoring and alerts come with Managed Protection at €1,500 per year.

Want to test the sources yourself first? Use the free self-serve tools: the media list tool, the Notability Index and the Wikipedia DR checker. Start with the free 10-minute assessment: contact us. If the case is unclear, we offer the paid notability audit from €490, credited toward the page if you order it within one month.