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Wikipedia Enters Top Ten Most Visited Sites

Danny Sullivan on February 16, 2007 at 10:24 am

Impressive. Scanning the latest top web sites rankings from
comScore for January 2007 ,
Wikipedia sites are highlighted for just
entering the top ten most visited. OK, technically — they’re in the top ten for
having the most unique visitors. In December 2006, Wikipedia sites were
ranked 13th
of all US web properties, with 39 million unique visitors. In January, comScore
says
Wikipedia rose to ninth ranked, with 43 million visitors. The top ten, to
provide perspective, rounded to the nearest million:

Yahoo Sites, 129 million
Time Warner Network, 117 million
Microsoft Sites, 115 million
Google Sites, 113 million
eBay, 81 million
Fox Interactive Media, 75 million
Amazon Sites, 51 million
Ask Network, 49 million
Wikipedia Sites, 43 million
New York Times Digital, 40 million

comScore doesn’t break out what makes up "Wikipedia" sites, but the majority
of US traffic is probably to www.wikipedia.org, the domain you generally see
ranking well for searches in Google (which itself operates the fourth most
popular group of sites). Other Wikipedia sites include language-specific
versions such as the Spanish-language
es.wikipedia.org version.

Where’s Wikipedia getting all this traffic? I already hinted that Google is
likely a huge resource, but comScore doesn’t say.

Wikipedia and Academic Research from LeeAnn Prescott over at
Hitwise last October has a nice chart
looking at Wikipedia’s growth of US traffic over time. The majority of that
traffic — 69 percent — came from search engines. I’ll do a shout-out now.
LeeAnn, how about you or one of the other Hitwise analysts giving us an updated
look at Wikipedia traffic sources via the
Hitwise blog?

With search engines sending Wikipedia so much traffic, you’d think they’d
consider doing even more to add direct answers or encyclopedia entries right in
their results. They’ve done much more of this over the years. But clearly people
want even more reference material, and Wikipedia seems to be getting the bulk of
that traffic. That’s no so bad — Wikipedia has plenty of great resources. But
as many feel
Wikipedia turns up in practically every search result on Google, it suggests
that perhaps tighter and more official integration into results might be helpful
to searchers.

By the way,

Wikipedia – Where do People Go After Visiting Wikipedia? from Hitwise, also
from last October, looks at traffic to Wikipedia from the UK. Google is the top
driver there — 54 percent, and most people leave Wikipedia in the UK to go to
sites in the computers & internet category.

FYI, globally Wikipedia sites
were ranked
by comScore sixth overall, for December 2006.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.