Wikipedia:Awareness statistics/obsolete

This lists a number of now-obsolete statistics which have been retired from Awareness statistics because they have become unreliable or unavailable. This page is kept as an archive; please do not update this page.

Alexa's English-language Top 100 (December 2004 to July 2005 only)


On 29 December 2004, for the first time, Wikipedia was listed on Alexa's list of the top 100 English-language web sites, at #99. In July 2005 it was removed from the list. At that point around 35% of Wikipedia's traffic as recorded by Alexa was to the non-English versions (probably an underestimate of the actual percentage), so Alexa presumably decided it was ineligible.

29 December 2004,  #99 01 January 2005,   #98 03 January 2005,   #94 06 January 2005,   #92 12 January 2005,   #88 15 January 2005,   #87 18 January 2005,   #88 21 January 2005,   #86 26 January 2005,   #85 29 January 2005,   #85 03 February 2005,  #83 06 February 2005,  #82 08 February 2005,  #81 12 February 2005,  #81 15 February 2005,  #79 17 February 2005,  #78 (ahead of AOL Messenger for the first time) 23 February 2005,  #74 24 February 2005,  #72 27 February 2005,  #72 1 March 2005,     #73 5 March 2005,     #71 9 March 2005,     #70 10 March 2005,     #69 17 March 2005,     #67 22 March 2005,     #67 26 March 2005,     #66 (ahead of blogger.com!) 30 March 2005,     #65 (ahead of msn.co.uk) 2 April 2005,     #65 4 April 2005,     #65 6 April 2005,     #63 9 April 2005,     #62 12 April 2005,     #62 19 April 2005,     #61 20 April 2005,     #60 23 April 2005,     #58 (just behind Expedia.com and the New York Times!) 1 May  2005,      #57 3 May  2005,      #55 6 May  2005,      #55 (ahead of New York Times and Bank of America) 12 May  2005,      #53 (ahead of NBA.com) 13 May  2005,      #51 14 May  2005,      #50 (first time in the top 50!) 17 May  2005,      #48 (just behind CNet) 27 May  2005,      #47 1 June 2005,      #46 (just behind Friendster) 7 June 2005,      #44 9 June 2005,      #43 12 June 2005,      #42 (ahead of Neopets; just behind Netscape.com) 16 June 2005,      #41 20 June 2005,      #40 (first time in top 40) 22 June 2005,      #39 24 June 2005,      #37 8 July 2005,      #35 (just behind Dell at 34 and Apple Computers at 33) 12 July 2005,      (not listed: now considered multi-lingual, hence ineligible)

Wikipedia's membership of this list has been terminated because it is a multilingual site.

Usenet posts about Wikipedia
Monthly count of Usenet posts containing the word "Wikipedia"

Source: Google

Data extracted from Google Groups, using the estimated figure:  January 2001,      0 February 2001,     0 March 2001,        3 April 2001,        0 May 2001,         19 June 2001,        54 July 2001,        27 August 2001,      84 September 2001,  152 October 2001,     87 November 2001,   133 December 2001,   105

January 2002,    161 February 2002,   102 March 2002,      112 April 2002,      141 May 2002,        149 June 2002,       208 July 2002,       305 August 2002,     389 September 2002,  304 October 2002,    430 November 2002,   349 December 2002,   523

January 2003,    378 February 2003,   333 March 2003,      687 April 2003,      644 May 2003,        693 June 2003,       716 July 2003,     1,160 August 2003,   1,140 September 2003, 1,760 October 2003,  1,840 November 2003, 1,620 December 2003, 2,140

January 2004,  2,330 ( 1,840) February 2004, 2,260 ( 1,800) March 2004,    3,200 ( 2,740) April 2004,    3,490 ( 2,990) May 2004,      3,610 ( 1,470) June 2004,     4,080 ( 1,920)   (30,700 with bug in google count) July 2004,     4,900 ( 2,210)   (31,300 with bug in google count) August 2004,   6,170 ( 3,450)   (38,500  with bug in google count) September 2004, 5,240 ( 6,670) October 2004,  6,520 (12,600) November 2004, 7,280 ( 3,160) Only new results available from now on: December 2004, 3,130

January 2005,  6,540    ( 8,700 - three monthly average) February 2005, 14,900   (36,100) March 2005,    7,490    (41,600) April 2005,    1,850    (28,600) May 2005,     10,400    ( 8,610) June 2005,    10,900    ( 5,970) July 2005,    17,100

This is the search used:

For june-->august search used: adding up and

Note that Google recently changed their usenet search engine. New results are given in parentheses behind the old results. From December 2004 only the new results are available.

Subsequent to November 2004, the search engine count appears to have become unreliable, with different iterations of the same search giving wildly different results. Note the major differences in the 2005 three monthly averages - this is an example of the unreliability of Google's Usenet search. The use of these statistics should therefore be discounted.

More specific references to wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com
Monthly count of Usenet posts containing the strings "wikipedia.org" or "wikipedia.com"; many of these will be actual links to Wikipedia.

Searches: for wikipedia.org and for wikipedia.com

Month              .org    .com      total January 2001,        0,      0,        0 February 2001,       0,      0,        0 March 2001,          0,      4,        4 April 2001,          0,      0,        0 May 2001,            0,     16,       16 June 2001,           0,     47,       47 July 2001,           0,     25,       25 August 2001,         0,     79,       79 September 2001,      0,    112,      112 October 2001,        0,     57,       57 November 2001,       0,     91,       91 December 2001,       0,     96,       96 January 2002,        1,    148,      149 February 2002,       0,     90,       90 March 2002,          0,    105,      105 April 2002,          1,    130,      131 May 2002,            0,    131,      131 June 2002,           0,    164,      164 July 2002,           5,    200,      205 August 2002,        46,    208,      254 September 2002,     84,    161,      245 October 2002,      260,     58,      318 November 2002,     214,     26,      240 December 2002,     318,      8,      326 January 2003,      201,     70,      271 February 2003,     176,     96,      272 March 2003,        539,     56,      595 April 2003,        509,     39,      548 May 2003,          611,      4,      615 June 2003,         592,     18,      610 July 2003,         964,     27,      991 August 2003,       955,     20,      975 September 2003,  1,240,     21,    1,261 October 2003,    1,140,     27,    1,167 November 2003,   1,110,     40,    1,150 December 2003,   1,340,      5,    1,345 January 2004,    1,820,      4,    1,824 February 2004,   1,740,     26,    1,766 March 2004,      2,430,     13,    2,443 April 2004,      2,820,      4,    2,824 May 2004,        2,600,     30,    2,630 June 2004,       2,890,     17,    2,907 July 2004,       3,680,     37,    3,717 August 2004,     4,820,     14,    4,834 September 2004,  3,910,      7,    3,917 October 2004,    4,630,     25,    4,655 November 2004,   5,500,     40,    5,540 December 2004,   5,730,     11,    5,741 January 2005,    2,640,     10,    2,650 February 2005,   5,180,     10,    5,190 March 2005,      5,490,     16,    5,506 April 2005,      6,900,      8,    6,908 May 2005,        3,180,     14,    3,194 June 2005,       7,470,      9,    7,479 July 2005,      13,100,     15,   13,115

Source: Google

As with the more general search, these more specific search figures appear to become unreliable after December 2004, with different iterations of the same search giving different figures.

Daily page requests for wikipedia.org
This is the average number of daily page requests for each month, for months where valid data is available. (Specifically, Dec 2002 and Jan 2003 have been excluded because much log data was lost for the en: wikipedia, underestimating real perfomance). Source:. Compare with the "pages" figures from for the en: Wikipedia alone. 

Month         English     All languages Aug 2002,      99,000,        99,000 Sep 2002,     180,000,       180,000 Oct 2002,     180,000,       180,000 Nov 2002,     198,000,       229,000 Dec 2002,     196,000,       233,000 Jan 2003,     141,000,       179,000 Feb 2003,     158,000,       200,000 Mar 2003,     224,000,       284,000 Apr 2003,     319,000,       401,000 May 2003,     281,000,       391,000 Jun 2003,     286,000,       399,000 Jul 2003,     321,000,       426,000 Aug 2003,     422,000,       623,000 Sep 2003,     609,000,     1,200,000 Oct 2003,     722,000,     1,200,000 Nov 2003,     857,000,     1,600,000 Feb 2004,   3,000,000,     5,700,000 Mar 2004,   2,400,000,     5,100,000 Apr 2004,   1,600,000,     4,400,000 May 2004,   2,400,000,     4,900,000 Jun 2004,   5,300,000,    12,100,000 Jul 2004,   5,700,000,    12,800,000 Aug 2004,   5,200,000,    11,900,000 Sep 2004,   4,800,000,    10,900,000 Oct 2004,   6,000,000,    13,300,000

From October 2004 to May 2005, no reliable page-counter data was available, due to the rapid changes in system configuration, and the many caching servers involved in keeping up with the traffic. Since May 2005 new global traffic figures across all Wikimedia sites, in all languages, have been available at http://kohl.wikimedia.org/reqstats/. As of 3 September 2005, averaged daily traffic on the busiest day of the week was reaching approximately 2.4 thousand requests per second, or roughly 200,000,000 requests per day.