Wikipedia:Google statistics

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

This page is part of the Wikipedia:Statistics family of pages. It records data about the frequency and prominence with which Wikipedia appears in search engines. Please see Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth for speculation on the trends in these statistics.

Statistics based on Google

Google PageRank for en.wiki.x.io

Google PageRank of the main English Wikipedia homepage:

22 October 2002,  41/100(www.wiki.x.io)
 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
 2 July 2005,     9/10 (en.wiki.x.io)
14 July 2005,     8/10 (major pagerank shift across many websites)
24 July 2005,     8/10
19 August 2005,   8/10
20 October 2005,  9/10 (en.wiki.x.io)
28 October 2005,  8/10
29 December 2005, 9/10 (en.wiki.x.io)

Note: higher is better.

Search used (enter "en.wiki.x.io")

Google News stories mentioning Wikipedia

News stories per month appearing on Google News that mention Wikipedia or contain links to Wikipedia. These may either be press coverage about Wikipedia or use of Wikipedia as a press source (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,     474849
September 2004, 209 (including 148 after the 20 september press release)
October 2004,    91
November 2004,   98
January 2005,   177847
February 2005,  19955
March 2005,     218
April 2005,     349 (hits for "wikinews": 15)
May 2005,       161 ("wikinews": 4)
June 2005,      45887 ("wikinews": 19)
July 2005,      567 ("wikinews": 38)
August 2005,    541 ("wikinews": 19)
September 2005, 493 ("wikinews": 15)
October 2005,   685 ("wikinews": 10)
November 2005,  497 ("wikinews": 21)

Google Answers using Wikipedia

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
 March 2005,     25
 April 2005,     42
 May 2005,       36
 June 2005,      43
 July 2005,      65
 August 2005,    73
 September 2005, 62
 October 2005,   81

Number of Wikipedia pages indexed by Google

This is the number of Wikipedia pages in Google's index. There is some AutoIt code at the bottom that will scrape the number of results from each datacenter at Google, but lately the easiest route has been just been grabbing the numbers from the CSV file that WikiPulse generates. You can also do a Google search for site:wikipedia.org. An amazing and steady increase.

Wikipedia derives 66% of traffic from search engine referrals, and 50% of that traffic comes from Google, meaning 33% of all Wikipedia traffic is from Google referrals alone (according to Hitwise - therefore these stats apply to U.S. traffic only, and that is only around a quarter of total traffic).

2005
21 March 2005,       2,710,000
21 March 2005,       4,170,000
22 March 2005,       4,550,000
22 March 2005,       5,170,000
23 March 2005,       5,440,000
23 March 2005,       6,490,000 
23 March 2005,       7,340,000 
24 March 2005,       7,350,000
26 March 2005,       7,470,000
26 March 2005,       7,530,000
 8 April 2005,       9,030,000
 9 April 2005,       9,350,000
10 April 2005,       9,730,000
10 April 2005,       9,850,000 
11 April 2005,      10,100,000
15 April 2005,      11,300,000
17 April 2005,      11,800,000
17 April 2005,      11,900,000
18 April 2005,      12,100,000
24 June 2005,       13,700,000
25 June 2005,       14,500,000
25 June 2005,       15,300,000
27 June 2005,       16,700,000
29 June 2005,       17,800,000
30 June 2005,       19,200,000
 1 July 2005,       20,000,000
 4 July 2005,       21,800,000
 6 July 2005,       22,900,000
 6 July 2005,       24,300,000
 9 July 2005,       25,500,000
11 July 2005,       26,100,000
 2 August 2005,     27,900,000
 5 August 2005,     30,900,000
 7 August 2005,     31,500,000
14 August 2005,     36,000,000
21 August 2005,     41,200,000
20 September 2005,  92,200,000
24 September 2005, 118,000,000 
27 September 2005, 158,000,000
01 October 2005,   307,000,000
04 October 2005,   349,000,000
30 January 2006,   171,000,000  (Google has done a bit of database trimming?)

You can get a more accurate number by polling each Google datacenter individually. The following basic AutoIt 3 code will paste the results to your clipboard.

#include <Misc.au3>
#include <Date.au3>
#include <File.au3>
#include <String.au3>
#include <Array.au3>

Global $results

$DCs = StringSplit ('64.233.161.99, 64.233.161.104, 64.233.161.105, 64.233.161.147, 64.233.167.99,
                    64.233.167.104, 64.233.167.147, 64.233.171.99, 64.233.171.104, 64.233.171.105,
                    64.233.171.147, 64.233.179.99, 64.233.179.99, 64.233.183.99, 64.233.183.104,
                    64.233.185.99, 64.233.185.104, 64.233.187.99, 64.233.187.104, 64.233.189.104,
                    66.102.7.104, 66.102.7.105, 66.102.7.147, 66.102.9.104, 66.102.11.104,
                    216.239.37.104, 216.239.37.105, 216.239.37.147, 216.239.39.104, 216.239.53.104,
                    216.239.57.98, 216.239.57.104, 216.239.57.105, 216.239.57.147, 216.239.59.104,
                    216.239.59.105, 216.239.63.104', ',')

For $loop = 1 to $DCs[0]
	Global $pagesingoogle = _ScreenScrape ('http://' & $DCs[$loop] &
                '/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awikipedia.org&btnG=Google+Search', 't <b>', '</b> f')

	$results = $results & @CRLF & $DCs[$loop] & ' : ' & $pagesingoogle
Next

ClipPut($results)

You will also need this _ScreenScrape function in your AutoIt include directory.

Google Trends search statistics

Google Trends provide information on how many searches are made for Wikipedia. This information is placed alongside news searches for Wikipedia.

A visit to the site will also provide comparative data for other searches and information on which regions and which languages the searches were made from.

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: [1]

 2 October 2003,      311k
 3 November 2003,     176k
 6 December 2003,   1,370k
 1 January 2004,    1,260k
 1 February 2004,   1,120k
28 February 2004,   2,180k
 5 April 2004,      1,790k 
30 April 2004,      1,980k
20 May 2004,        2,250k
 2 July 2004,       1,900k
19 July 2004,       2,630k
 1 August 2004,     3,230k
13 August 2004,     3,920k
23 August 2004,     4,030k
 1 September 2004,  4,100k
28 September 2004,  4,480k
18 January 2005,    5,140k
 1 February 2005,   4,890k
13 February 2005,   6,660k
20 February 2005,   9,800k
 1 March 2005,     10,200k
27 March 2005,      6,630k
30 March 2005,     10,600k
06 May 2005,       10,200k
13 June 2005,      11,100k
 5 July 2005,      13,000k
 7 September 2005, 35,800k
20 September 2005, 31,600k
11 October 2005,   34,400k
21 October 2005,   41,500k
28 October 2005,   36,800k
 6 November 2005,  44,500k
 7 January 2006,   45,100k