Wikipedia:Awareness statistics
This page is part of the Wikipedia:Statistics family of pages. It attempts to measure the growth in public awareness of Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth for speculation on the trends in these statistics.
It is interesting to compare the following graph with the graphs in Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Traffic.
Usenet posts about Wikipedia
Monthly count of Usenet posts containing the word "Wikipedia"
Source: Google
Data extracted from Google Groups, using the estimated figure:
January 2001, 0 February 2001, 0 March 2001, 3 April 2001, 0 May 2001, 19 June 2001, 54 July 2001, 27 August 2001, 84 September 2001, 152 October 2001, 87 November 2001, 133 December 2001, 105
January 2002, 161 February 2002, 102 March 2002, 112 April 2002, 141 May 2002, 149 June 2002, 208 July 2002, 305 August 2002, 389 September 2002, 304 October 2002, 430 November 2002, 349 December 2002, 523
January 2003, 378 February 2003, 333 March 2003, 687 April 2003, 644 May 2003, 693 June 2003, 716 July 2003, 1160 August 2003, 1140 September 2003, 1760 October 2003, 1840 November 2003, 1620 December 2003, 2140
January 2004, 2330 (1840) February 2004, 2260 (1800) March 2004, 3200 (2740) April 2004, 3490 (2990) May 2004, 3610 (1470) June 2004, 4080 (1920) (30700 with bug in google count) July 2004, 4900 (2210) (31300 with bug in google count) August 2004, 6170 (3450) (38500 with bug in google count) September 2004, 5240 (6670) October 2004, 6520 (12600) November 2004, 7280 (3160) December 2004, (3130)
This is the search used: [1]
For june-->august search used: adding up [2] and [3]
Note that Google recently changed their usenet search engine. New results are given in parentheses behind the old results. From December 2004 only the new results are available.
Subsequent to November 2004, the search engine count appears to have become unreliable, with different iterations of the same search giving wildly different results.
More specific references to wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com
Monthly count of Usenet posts containing the strings "wikipedia.org" or "wikipedia.com"; many of these will be actual links to Wikipedia.
Searches: for wikipedia.com and for wikipedia.org
Month .org .com total January 2001, 0, 0, 0 February 2001, 0, 0, 0 March 2001, 0, 4, 4 April 2001, 0, 0, 0 May 2001, 0, 16, 16 June 2001, 0, 47, 47 July 2001, 0, 25, 25 August 2001, 0, 79, 79 September 2001, 0, 112, 112 October 2001, 0, 57, 57 November 2001, 0, 91, 91 December 2001, 0, 96, 96 January 2002, 1, 148, 149 February 2002, 0, 90, 90 March 2002, 0, 105, 105 April 2002, 1, 130, 131 May 2002, 0, 131, 131 June 2002, 0, 164, 164 July 2002, 5, 200, 205 August 2002, 46, 208, 254 September 2002, 84, 161, 245 October 2002, 260, 58, 318 November 2002, 214, 26, 240 December 2002, 318, 8, 326 January 2003, 201, 70, 271 February 2003, 176, 96, 272 March 2003, 539, 56, 595 April 2003, 509, 39, 548 May 2003, 611, 4, 615 June 2003, 592, 18, 610 July 2003, 964, 27, 991 August 2003, 955, 20, 975 September 2003, 1240, 21, 1261 October 2003, 1140, 27, 1167 November 2003, 1110, 40, 1150 December 2003, 1340, 5, 1345 January 2004, 1820, 4, 1824 February 2004, 1740, 26, 1766 March 2004, 2430, 13, 2443 April 2004, 2820, 4, 2824 May 2004, 2600, 30, 2630 June 2004, 2890, 17, 2907 July 2004, 3680, 37, 3717 August 2004, 4820, 14, 4834 September 2004, 3910, 7, 3917 October 2004, 4630, 25, 4655 November 2004, 5500, 40, 5540 December 2004, 5730, 11, 5741 January 2005, 2640, 10, 2650 February 2005, 5180, 10, 5190
Source: Google
As with the more general search, these more specific search figures appear to become unreliable after December 2004, with different iterations of the same search giving different figures.
Mentions of Wikipedia on websites outside Wikipedia
This estimates the number of mentions of Wikipedia on websites outside Wikipedia itself using a Google search.
This is the search used: [4]
2 October 2003, 311k 3 November 2003, 176k 6 December 2003, 1370k 1 January 2004, 1260k 1 February 2004, 1120k 28 February 2004, 2180k 5 April 2004, 1790k 30 April 2004, 1980k 20 May 2004, 2250k 2 July 2004, 1900k 19 July 2004, 2630k 1 August 2004, 3230k 13 August 2004, 3920k 23 August 2004, 4030k 1 September 2004, 4100k 28 September 2004, 4480k 18 January 2005, 5140k 1 February 2005, 4890k 13 February 2005, 6660k 20 February 2005, 9800k 1 March 2005, 10200k 27 March 2005, 6630k 30 March 2005, 10600k
Google Answers using Wikipedia
Google#Google Answers - answers per month that included Wikipedia references (search used):
April 2002, 1 July 2002, 5 August 2002, 2 September 2002, 4 October 2002, 11 November 2002, 7 December 2002, 10 January 2003, 0 February 2003, 1 March 2003, 12 April 2003, 10 May 2003, 8 June 2003, 10 July 2003, 17 August 2003, 10 September 2003, 13 October 2003, 7 November 2003, 19 December 2003, 21 January 2004, 20 February 2004, 23 March 2004, 20 April 2004, 21 May 2004, 27 June 2004, 28 July 2004, 24 August 2004, 19 September 2004, 31 October 2004, 24 November 2004, 46 December 2004, 36 January 2005, 41 February 2005, 30
Google News stories mentioning Wikipedia
Google#Google News -- news stories per month that mention Wikipedia or contain links to Wikipedia:
search used
June 2003, 2 July 2003, 4 August 2003, 4 September 2003, 8 October 2003, 51 (including one story in 46 copies) November 2003, 7 December 2003, 6 January 2004, 15 February 2004, 15 March 2004, 32 April 2004, 42 May 2004, 41 June 2004, 42 July 2004, 79 August 2004, 49 September 2004, 209 (including 148 after the 20 september press release) October 2004, 91 November 2004, 98 January 2005, 147 February 2005, 195
Google PageRank for www.wikipedia.org
Google PageRank of the main English Wikipedia homepage (www.wikipedia.org) :
22 October 2002, 6/10 3 November 2002, 7/10 1 December 2002, 8/10 10 January 2003, 8/10 15 March 2003, 7/10 (perhaps Google's algorithm was changed?) 12 April 2003, 7/10 30 May 2003, 7/10 2 October 2003, 8/10 7 November 2003, 8/10 30 January 2004, 8/10 22 October 2004, 8/10 24 December 2004, 8/10
Note: higher is better.
Daily page requests for wikipedia.org
This is the average number of daily page requests for each month, for months where valid data is available. (Specifically, Dec 2002 and Jan 2003 have been excluded because much log data was lost for the en: wikipedia, underestimating real perfomance). Source: [5]. Compare with the "pages" figures from [6] for the en: Wikipedia alone.
Month English All languages Aug 2002, 99000, 99000 Sep 2002, 180000, 180000 Oct 2002, 180000, 180000 Nov 2002, 198000, 229000 Dec 2002, 196000, 233000 Jan 2003, 141000, 179000 Feb 2003, 158000, 200000 Mar 2003, 224000, 284000 Apr 2003, 319000, 401000 May 2003, 281000, 391000 Jun 2003, 286000, 399000 Jul 2003, 321000, 426000 Aug 2003, 422000, 623000 Sep 2003, 609000, 1200000 Oct 2003, 722000, 1200000 Nov 2003, 857000, 1600000 Feb 2004, 3000000, 5700000 Mar 2004, 2400000, 5100000 Apr 2004, 1600000, 4400000 May 2004, 2400000, 4900000 Jun 2004, 5300000, 12100000 Jul 2004, 5700000, 12800000 Aug 2004, 5200000, 11900000 Sep 2004, 4800000, 10900000 Oct 2004, 6000000, 13300000
Since October 2004, no reliable page-counter data has been available, due to the rapid changes in system configuration, and the many caching servers involved in keeping up with the traffic. This is on the list of things to be fixed. A rough estimate, as of January 2005, was that the total traffic was roughly 80 million hits per day.
Alexa traffic ranking for wikipedia.org
http://www.alexa.com traffic ranking to main English Wikipedia site - lower is better, 1 is theoretically the most popular site on the Internet.
Use this link to update this table: use the "1 wk. avg" figure to eliminate the effect of the weekly cyclic variation in Wikipedia traffic. Note that the date in general differs by one day from "today"--the correct date is given in the lower right corner under the graph.
22 October 2002, 9653 27 October 2002, 9440 3 November 2002, 9047 13 November 2002, 8356 22 November 2002, 7922 1 December 2002, 7543 10 January 2003, 14882 (slight slip; Alexa site shows major traffic dip around this time) 1 February 2003, 7897 (recovering again) 7 February 2003, 6799 (woo hoo!) 15 February 2003, 5406 23 February 2003, 5228 4 March 2003, 7328 11 March 2003, 5713 13 March 2003, 4735 (seems to be from boost in Google ranking) 15 March 2003, 3662 17 March 2003, 3342 28 March 2003, 3653 6 April 2003, 3072 12 April 2003, 3444 16 April 2003, 3785 28 April 2003, 3422 6 May 2003, 3832 18 May 2003, 3212 22 May 2003, 2965 29 May 2003, 2509 (possibly driven by Earthlink E-mail newsletter publicity) 16 June 2003, 3289 23 June 2003, 3187 2 July 2003, 2676 13 July 2003, 2033 17 July 2003, 2045 8 August 2003, 1406 2 October 2003, 941 21 October 2003, 1038 29 October 2003, 1189 (recent reduction in rank probably due to server problems) 3 November 2003, 1168 13 November 2003, 906 (performance is better after load-balancing installed) 25 November 2003, 934 (ranking continues to be around 1000 +/- 100) 3 December 2003, 950 (but new server has been installed; so expect better ranking soon?) 6 December 2003, 887 8 December 2003, 838 12 December 2003, 828 15 December 2003, 751* 1 January 2004, 1114 (a big drop back after Christmas and two major server outages) 12 January 2004, 851 (even when running slowly on backup hardware!) 24 January 2004, 778 28 January 2004, 742* 1 February 2004, 874 14 February 2004, 779 20 February 2004, 816 27 February 2004, 712* 3 March 2004, 723 8 March 2004, 678* 14 March 2004, 654* 20 March 2004, 649* 21 March 2004, 643* 25 March 2004, 634* 30 March 2004, 619* 2 April 2004, 608* 9 April 2004, 646 16 April 2004, 605* 22 April 2004, 607 23 April 2004, 596* 30 April 2004, 661 1 May 2004, 686 (hardware problems are causing a drop in traffic) 10 May 2004, 676 (continued poor traffic) 12 May 2004, 628 (making a comeback) 13 May 2004, 617 14 May 2004, 582 16 May 2004, 556* 19 May 2004, 563 20 May 2004, 558 24 May 2004, 598 27 May 2004, 619 1 June 2004, 609 2 June 2004, 538* 6 June 2004, 567 8 June 2004, 591 16 June 2004, 694 22 June 2004, 709 23 June 2004, 687 24 June 2004, 658 29 June 2004, 653 4 July 2004, 671 12 July 2004, 654 16 July 2004, 616 19 July 2004, 600 22 July 2004, 570 25 July 2004, 531 27 July 2004, 503* 28 July 2004, 487* 31 July 2004, 499 1 August 2004, 536 (taking odd nosedive) 4 August 2004, 583 13 August 2004, 647 (dropping back again) 23 August 2004, 595 31 August 2004, 506 (after adding 4 new servers) 2 September 2004, 482* 3 September 2004, 475* 4 September 2004, 463* 8 September 2004, 458* 9 September 2004, 450* 10 September 2004, 446* 12 September 2004, 424* 14 September 2004, 427 15 September 2004, 433 20 September 2004, 457 21 September 2004, 451 22 September 2004, 437 23 September 2004, 437 24 September 2004, 429 25 September 2004, 423* 26 September 2004, 419* 27 September 2004, 417* 29 September 2004, 414* 30 September 2004, 409* 04 October 2004, 398* (top 400) 05 October 2004, 383* (daily: 290) 06 October 2004, 361* 07 October 2004, 323* (daily: 250) 08 October 2004, 303* 09 October 2004, 290* (top 300) 11 October 2004, 293 12 October 2004, 288* 13 October 2004, 280* (daily: 231) 14 October 2004, 271* (daily: 218) 15 October 2004, 254* (daily: 197) 16 October 2004, 251* 17 October 2004, 243* 18 October 2004, 239* 19 October 2004, 237* 20 October 2004, 231* 21 October 2004, 233 22 October 2004, 238 23 October 2004, 237 25 October 2004, 226* 26 October 2004, 222* 27 October 2004, 221* 31 October 2004, 235 9 November 2004, 238 12 November 2004, 227 16 November 2004, 222 17 November 2004, 217* 18 November 2004, 210* (daily: 172) 19 November 2004, 208* 20 November 2004, 196* (top 200, daily: 158) 21 November 2004, 183* 22 November 2004, 175* 23 November 2004, 167* (daily: 152*) 24 November 2004, 171 25 November 2004, 168 29 November 2004, 178 5 December 2004, 174 10 December 2004, 166* (daily: 153) 22 December 2004, 191 (daily: 161) 29 December 2004, 204 (daily: 159) 01 January 2005, 187 (daily: 143*) 02 January 2005, 165* 03 January 2005, 156* (daily: 140*) 04 January 2005, 147* (daily: 132*) 06 January 2005, 143* (daily: 130*) 13 January 2005, 141* 18 January 2005, 168 (daily: 192) - after running slowly for several days 19 January 2005, 163 (daily: 122*) - still running slowly 21 January 2005, 139* (daily: 137) 22 January 2005, 136* (daily: 144) 24 January 2005, 132* (daily: 115*) 29 January 2005, 140 (daily: 146) 07 February 2005, 141 (daily: 144) 12 February 2005, 137 (daily: 120) 15 February 2005, 122* (daily: 118) 19 February 2005, 119* (daily: 106*) 21 February 2005, 118* (daily: 135) 23 Feburary 2005, 115* (daily: 124) 27 Feburary 2005, 123 (daily: 139) recovering after big server crash 1 March 2005, 128 (daily: 112) still recovering 2 March 2005, 123 (daily: 110) 6 March 2005, 115 (daily: 128) 8 March 2005, 114* (daily: 105*) 19 March 2005, 110* (daily: 134) 22 March 2005, 110 (daily: 104*) 23 March 2005, 109* (daily: 95*) first daily rank in the top 100! 24 March 2005, 104* (daily: 95) 26 March 2005, 113 (daily: 105) 30 March 2005, 101* (daily: 89) first daily rank in top 90!
Alexa Global Top 500
In October 2004, Wikipedia appeared in Alexa's list of the Global Top 500 web sites.
12 October 2004, #468 28 October 2004, #403 01 November 2004, #393 05 November 2004, #381 09 November 2004, #378 12 November 2004, #346 15 November 2004, #329 24 November 2004, #293 07 December 2004, #272 10 December 2004, #255 22 December 2004, #221 24 December 2004, #214 29 December 2004, #209 03 January 2005, #207 04 January 2005, #200 06 January 2005, #196 13 January 2005, #188 17 January 2005, #184 18 January 2005, #183 19 January 2005, #181 20 January 2005, #180 29 January 2005, #175 07 February 2005, #167 12 February 2005, #163 15 February 2005, #156 23 February 2005, #149 27 February 2005, #146 1 March 2005, #142 5 March 2005, #138 10 March 2005, #136 19 March 2005, #132 22 March 2005, #131 26 March 2005, #127 30 March 2005, #124
Alexa's English-language Top 100
On 29 December 2004, for the first time, Wikipedia was listed on Alexa's list of the top 100 English-language web sites, at #99.
29 December 2004, #99 01 January 2005, #98 03 January 2005, #94 06 January 2005, #92 12 January 2005, #88 15 January 2005, #87 18 January 2005, #88 21 January 2005, #86 26 January 2005, #85 29 January 2005, #85 03 February 2005, #83 06 February 2005, #82 08 February 2005, #81 12 February 2005, #81 15 February 2005, #79 17 February 2005, #78 (ahead of AOL Messenger for the first time) 23 February 2005, #74 24 February 2005, #72 27 February 2005, #72 1 March 2005, #73 5 March 2005, #71 9 March 2005, #70 10 March 2005, #69 17 March 2005, #67 22 March 2005, #67 26 March 2005, #66 (ahead of blogger.com!) 30 March 2005, #65 (ahead of msn.co.uk)
Alexa Top Reference Sites
On 10 March 2005, Wikipedia was listed in Alexa's list of reference sites [7] at #4.
10 March 2005, #4 22 March 2005, #4 26 March 2005, #4 (but traffic rank has now outstripped that of #3, dictionary.com)
Alexa reach per million measurement for wikipedia.org
Alexa reach per million viewers: (reach figures can be found at the bottom of the Alexa page cited above [8]. To update this table: use the "1 wk. avg" figure to eliminate the effect of the weekly cyclic variation in Wikipedia traffic, please.
Detail: the one-week average figure is the seven-day rolling average of daily reach.
7 February 2003, 125 15 February 2003, 155 23 February 2003, 125 15 March 2003, 210 28 March 2003, 265 12 April 2003, 285 16 April 2003, 270 6 May 2003, 360* 18 May 2003, 300 29 May 2003, 330 16 June 2003, 330 2 July 2003, 420 13 July 2003, 530 17 July 2003, 530 8 August 2003, 665* 2 October 2003, 905 21 October 2003, 990* 3 November 2003, 880 13 November 2003, 910 25 November 2003, 950 3 December 2003, 945 6 December 2003, 1010 8 December 2003, 1050 12 December 2003, 1050 15 December 2003, 1070* 1 January 2004, 905 12 January 2004, 1105* 24 January 2004, 1285* 28 January 2004, 1390* 1 February 2004, 1290 14 February 2004, 1390 20 February 2004, 1340 27 February 2004, 1380 3 March 2004, 1345 8 March 2004, 1440* 14 March 2004, 1465 20 March 2004, 1515* 21 March 2004, 1565 30 March 2004, 1630* 2 April 2004, 1625 16 April 2004, 1740* 22 April 2004, 2000* 23 April 2004, 1845 1 May 2004, 1700, (hardware problems affecting traffic) 10 May 2004, 1660, (problems continue, new hardware is on order) 12 May 2004, 1695 13 May 2004, 1685 16 May 2004, 1840 19 May 2004, 1885 20 May 2004, 1950 27 May 2004, 1770 1 June 2004, 1845 8 June 2004, 1940 16 June 2004, 1585 22 June 2004, 1535 23 June 2004, 1560 24 June 2004, 1625 29 June 2004, 1650 19 July 2004, 1755 22 July 2004, 1910, (Making a comeback) 25 July 2004, 2020 27 July 2004, 2105* 28 July 2004, 2115* 31 July 2004, 2030 4 August 2004, 1735 13 August 2004, 1505, (a big drop) 23 August 2004, 1515 31 August 2004, 1870, (after installing 4 new servers) 2 September 2004, 1945 9 September 2004, 1930 10 September 2004, 1895 12 September 2004, 1950 14 September 2004, 1935 15 September 2004, 1880 17 September 2004, 1835 21 September 2004, 1710 22 September 2004, 1715 23 September 2004, 1730 24 September 2004, 1735 25 September 2004, 1760 26 September 2004, 1770 27 September 2004, 1770 30 September 2004, 1740 04 October 2004, 2040 05 October 2004, 2235* 06 October 2004, 2405* 07 October 2004, 2600* 08 October 2004, 2810* 09 October 2004, 2985* 11 October 2004, 2950 12 October 2004, 2915 13 October 2004, 2910 14 October 2004, 2935 15 October 2004, 3000* 16 October 2004, 3250* 18 October 2004, 3160 19 October 2004, 3260* 20 October 2004, 3320* 21 October 2004, 3365* 23 October 2004, 3425* 26 October 2004, 3615* 31 October 2004, 3315 19 November 2004, 3570 20 November 2004, 3655* 22 November 2004, 3970* 23 November 2004, 4045* 25 November 2004, 4025 5 December 2004, 4200* 10 December 2004, 4065 22 December 2004, 3840 29 December 2004, 3570 (daily: 4300) 01 January 2005, 3940 (daily: 4700) 03 January 2005, 4535* (daily: 5300) 04 January 2005, 4710* (daily: 5450*) 06 January 2005, 4905* (daily: 5300) 19 January 2005, 4735 24 January 2005, 4955* (daily: 5450) 1 February 2005, 4825 (daily: 5150) 4 February 2005, 4980* (daily: 5000) 8 February 2005, 4955 (daily: 5600*) 11 February 2005, 5185* (daily: 5600) 12 February 2005, 5245* (daily: 4900) 15 February 2005, 5340* (daily: 5500) 19 February 2005, 5385* (daily: 5800*) 1 March 2005, 4950 (daily: 5450), recovering from server crash 19 March 2005, 5365 (daily: 4700) 22 March 2005, 5455* (daily: 5900*) 23 March 2005, 5515* (daily: 6100*) 30 March 2005, 5825 (daily: 6400)
Alexa page views per million measurement for wikipedia.org
Alexa page view statistics for wikipedia.org per million overall page views: (see [9]. Since this statistic is only displayed as a graph, rather than a number, you will need to estimate it from the graph displayed via the link given above, and use the date displayed on the graph, which is sometimes not up-to-date.
1 January 2003, 10 1 April 2003, 20 1 July 2003, 25 1 October 2003, 70 1 January 2004, 70 1 April 2004, 110 1 July 2004, 104 1 August 2004, 110 1 September 2004, 130 1 October 2004, 140 1 November 2004, 195 1 December 2004, 290 1 January 2005, 330 20 January 2005, 300 30 January 2005, 318 11 February 2005, 344 14 February 2005, 358 18 February 2005, 370 21 February 2005, 325 27 February 2005, 375 1 March 2005, 365 3 March 2005, 350 21 March 2005, 435 22 March 2005, 440 23 March 2005, 450 24 March 2005, 380 26 March 2005, 425 30 March 2005, 480