Wikipedia U.S. Web Traffic Grows 8,000 Percent in Five Years

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today announced that four out
of the five top referring Web sites to Wikipedia, which has grown nearly 8,000
percent over the last five years, are search engines, led by Google. In April,
61 percent of visitors from home and 66 percent of visitors from work to
en.wikipedia.org were referred from Google (see Table 1). Yahoo! Search was
the second most common referring site to English-language Wikipedia, referring
19 percent and 16 percent of visitors from home and work, respectively. Other
searchproviders to make the top five referring destinations for Wikipedia were
MSN/Windows Live Search and AOL Search.


Table 1: Top Referring Sudomains for en.wikipedia.org for April 2008 (U.S.)

Subdomain             Percent of         Subdomain                   Percent of
                    Visitors at Home                                   Visitors at Work
www.google.com                      61   www.google.com                 66
search.yahoo.com                    19   search.yahoo.com                16
www.wikipedia.org                   11   www.wikipedia.org                9
search.msn.com                       5   search.msn.com                     6
aolsearch.aol.com                    3   search.live.com                      4

Source: Nielsen Online
Note: Referral traffic is not unduplicated. Visitors can be referred from
more than one Web site during the month.


"Search providers dominate Wikipedia's referring traffic because of
itsscope and value as an information resource," said Michael Pond, media
analyst,

Nielsen Online. "The site's rapid ascent, with audience levels comparable to
popular brands such as eBay and MySpace, demonstrates the success of its
collaborative nature -- readers can edit entries and add information. This
consumer involvement has led to an increase in blog mentions of Wikipedia,
which builds the site's relevance and credibility."

In the past five years, Web traffic to Wikipedia has skyrocketed, increasing
nearly 8,000 percent from April 2003 to April 2008. Year-over-year growth rates
indicate surges where Wikipedia gained traction in the online marketplace (


Table 2: Web Traffic Growth at Wikipedia (U.S., Home and Work)

April     Unique Audience (000)   YOY Growth
2003                       700            NA
2004                     2,082           197%
2005                     6,753           224%
2006                    25,970           285%
2007                    45,934            77%
2008                    55,820            17%

Source: Nielsen Online