There have been reports suggesting that there has been a loss of traffic for Wikipedia on Google searches, this has now been confirmed by Jimmy Wales co-founder of Wikipedia, he stated “It is not as drastic as reports are suggesting”. He then went on to say “It is more of a long term issue Wikipedia have noticed a decline in traffic from Google”.
Below is a chart to show how Wikipedia is losing traffic on Google over a 2 year period.
A few years ago Wikipedia was one of the most visible sites on Google search but evidence shows it is losing approximately 250 million visits per month. One reason for this is Wikipedia takes information from different sites and in return puts links on for different websites, which eventually means less visits for Wikipedia.
Where does Wikipedia rank on the search results?
Below is an example of how low Wikipedia is on the search results. For example typed in on the search bar is “who won the 2014 world cup”? As you can see Wikipedia is 4th on the list, where in the past Wikipedia used to be the first result.
If you click on the down arrow which Google provides it will go to the overview of the German national team. This might be all users may need to find out so Google believes it is saving users clicking on Wikipedia. In the past people would not have got the option and would have had to go straight to Wikipedia. Google has their own Google box known as the “promo box” which provides better sites to get information from.
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