Google Sends 24% of All Wikipedia Traffic

Even casual Google users will have often seen Wikipedia articles pop up surprisingly near the top of the search results page, and for many search terms, they are seen by Google as the most authoritative pages of all.

Until now, however, it wasn't clear just how much traffic Wikipedia gets as a result of Google's patronage. According to Wikimedia's server logs, about 1.7 billion page views are generated as a result of Google traffic. This is about 24% of the total monthly traffic on all of the wikis hosted by Wikimedia. Wikipedia makes up the majoriy of the Wikimedia project.

By contrast, Yahoo sends 2% of total traffic, and MSN and Live Search combined send less than 1%. For whatever reason, Google's algorithms rank Wikipedia pages as being significantly more relevant than any other search engine.

This just goes to show how Google can make or break your website or blog, and the importance of search engine optimization.

[via]

Labels: Technology