Google & Other Search Engines Dominate Traffic Drivers To Wikipedia

May 14, 2008 at 12:30pm ET by Danny Sullivan

When writing about Powerset this week, I covered how its hopes to gain Wikipedia users was complicated by the fact that Wikipedia itself gets so many people from search, rather than direct navigation. New stats (PDF) from Nielsen Online reaffirm this — four of the five top referring sites to Wikipedia are search engines, with Google by far the leader.

Here’s the rundown on top referring sites that generate home users from the US, for April 2008:

Site	Percent
Google www.google.com	61%
Yahoo Search search.yahoo.com	19%
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org	11%
MSN Search search.msn.com	5%
AOL Search aolsearch.aol.com	3%

To explain further, the chart above shows that 61 percent of people who were referred to Wikipedia in some way came from Google. And top sites that generate work users:

Site	Percent
Google www.google.com	66%
Yahoo Search search.yahoo.com	16%
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org	9%
MSN Search search.msn.com	6%
AOL Search aolsearch.aol.com	4%

All that traffic Google sends to Wikipedia is one reason that many suspect Google would like to have its own Wikipedia alternative. Google Knol – Google’s Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages covers more about this, though that particular project has yet to happen.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:

See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Search Engines: Wikipedia, Stats: Popularity sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!