How to Hire a Wikipedia Agency: Seven Questions to Ask First

What are you actually buying from a Wikipedia agency?

You are buying two things stacked together: an article that meets Wikipedia's standards, and a path through community review that it survives. The first is neutral, encyclopedic writing built only from independent reliable sources. The second is what happens when volunteer editors read it, sometimes within minutes of publication and sometimes weeks later.

A vendor strong at the first and weak at the second ships polished drafts that never go live. A vendor strong at the second and weak at the first can slip a page through and lose it later. You need both, which is why the questions below are about process, not prose.

1. Does the agency assess notability before it quotes?

It should, and in writing. Notability is Wikipedia's test of whether independent sources have already covered the subject in depth. For companies the standard is WP:NCORP; the full source test is in our guide does your company qualify for Wikipedia, and the short version in can my company get a Wikipedia page.

A professional first reply asks for your list of independent coverage and says that it will be read against the rules before any quote. If the first message is a price, the agency has not read your sources. A written assessment also gives your team a defensible record: when leadership asks why a page did not launch, you can show exactly which sources were insufficient.

2. Who edits the page, and how is the work disclosed?

Ask for the human being making the edits and the way the paid relationship is declared. Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline and the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use on paid contributions require paid editors to disclose who is paying them. Disclosure is not a hurdle to get around; it is what makes the work legitimate. More in paid editing and COI disclosure.

Acceptable answers: named, experienced editors with accounts in good standing, working under disclosure, with internal review. Warning signs:

• "We use AI to write it." AI-generated drafts are increasingly detected and rejected.
• "Our editor network is confidential." Client confidentiality is normal; workflow confidentiality is a hedge.
• Any language about avoiding detection or "untraceable" edits. That is the pattern that gets pages deleted and accounts blocked.

At WikiBusines, paid work is always disclosed on Wikipedia in WikiBusines' name.

3. Will you get a written source assessment?

Yes, before drafting. For each source you supplied it should say whether it counts, what facts it supports, and, for each that fails, whether the gap can be closed or the page is unrealistic now. Skipping this step means the draft is built from whatever turns up in a search, and the weak sources get cut at review, taking claims with them.

4. What happens after publication?

A published page is not "set and forget". Community editors improve it, drive-by editors sometimes degrade it, and any editor can nominate it for deletion at Articles for Deletion (AfD), the public discussion where the community decides whether it stays. Ask what the window is and who leads the defense.

Reasonable terms, in writing: a fixed monitoring period; the agency leads the defense of its own work; a stated refund if the page cannot be defended. Our terms are 90 days of monitoring and guarantee after publication, and an 80% refund if a published page cannot be defended after 3 attempts within that window. After that, ongoing care is an annual support plan.

Unreasonable terms: "we guarantee the page will never be deleted" (no one can) or "if it is deleted we will just create another" (repeated re-creation can end with the title locked against new drafts). Only Wikipedia administrators set page protection.

5. How is price set by language edition?

By the difficulty and review culture of each edition. Our starting prices: English €2,400; German and other first-tier editions €1,800; second-tier editions such as Ukrainian, French, Spanish and Polish €1,500; smaller editions €900. The per-language list is in the price sheet, and the logic of choosing editions is in multilingual Wikipedia strategy.

A single price for "any language", or a very cheap English page, suggests mass-produced drafts. For editing an existing page, expect a range (we quote €700 to €1,900) rather than a flat number.

6. What are the payment and refund terms?

Ask for them before signing, not after. Useful filters: payment tied to milestones rather than the full amount before any work; a refund rule that covers both pre-publication cancellation and the post-publication window; and clarity on what is refunded after drafting has begun. Crypto-only payment is worth a question, not an automatic no.

7. Which red flags end the conversation?

One is a reason to dig; two or more is a reason to walk.

• Promised publication. No agency controls the reviewers.
• No source assessment step. They either cannot do it or produce pages in bulk.
• "We control what AI says about your brand." Nobody can; the real work is building reliable sources and structured data. See AI visibility and Wikipedia.
• No order-of-magnitude price anywhere. Some bespoke quoting is fine; total opacity is a hedge.
• Heavy urgency. An engagement is weeks of editorial work followed by upkeep; there is no reason to sign today.
• No way to see the work. Client names can be confidential, but an agency should be able to explain its editorial approach and show its public editing record.

What should you send in the first email?

Send what lets the agency answer honestly: what the page is about and the trigger (funding, M&A, a reputation event); target languages; any past drafts or deleted attempts; 10 to 15 links to the strongest independent coverage, including the questionable ones, since they will be spotted anyway; a rough budget; and your decision timeline. Before you write, inventory the last 24 months of coverage and clean up any past in-house edits from company accounts, which Wikipedia keeps in history permanently.

Is Wikipedia worth it for your company?

For established companies with substantive independent coverage, usually yes: the page is one of the sources Google's knowledge panels and AI assistants draw on. For early-stage companies without that coverage, not yet; spend the budget on earning it. For brands with reputational issues, be careful: Wikipedia reflects negative coverage that meets the reliability bar, and a neutral article may not be the one your reputation team pictured.

How WikiBusines helps

We start with the source assessment, name the editor, disclose paid work on Wikipedia in WikiBusines' name, and do not guarantee that an article will be published.

• Notability audit, from €490, credited toward the page if ordered within one month: a written verdict per source.
• Wikipedia page creation, from €2,400 for English, 4 to 5 weeks, with 90 days of monitoring and guarantee after publication.
• Annual support, from €720 per year, for up to 4 updates, with a 12-month guarantee.

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.