Wikipedia:Most read articles in 2010

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This essay, "Most-read articles in 2010" (or Most-viewed articles in 2010), is an averaged ranking, based on various Wikipedia article traffic statistics (revised 27 June 2010),^[1] gathered informally through mid 2010. Listed, in separate groups, are: the Top 1000 articles (below), then many of the top 10,000 articles, followed by scattered counts for other, various, popular articles (ranked by monthly interest below 20,000 pageviews per month).

The top 1000 articles included "Search", "wiki", "United States", "Avatar", "Lady GaGa", "Justin Bieber" (#12), YouTube, Deaths in 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Haiti, Glee (TV series) and Lost (TV series), with many celebrities or films ranking very high. The word "wiki" (#7) is still viewed by millions, along with YouTube (#13), Facebook, and "Wikipedia" (#20) all higher than "Sex" (#27). Many blog websites, celebrities, and sexual words ranked above 500. Moving into the Top 1000, this year, were: Haiti, Sam Worthington and Julia Roberts. Some articles had counts very similar to last year, such as "God", Iran, Michael Jordan, Warren Buffett, PlayStation 3, Crohn's disease and Bruce Lee, whereas other articles fell sharply, such as: Charles Darwin, John Dillinger, "Windows 7" or Tiger Woods, with some articles barely leaving the list, such as: Bruce Springsteen, Susan Boyle, Michelle Obama, Andy Samberg, Natasha Richardson and swine flu.

The Top 1000 average over 5600 pageviews/day, but any low month, below 1500 per day, would drop an article's average by over 350 per day. Even in December, a low-interest article can skyrocket into the Top 1000 if a major news event causes reader-interest to exceed 1.9 million pageviews within a month (5600 pageviews/day totals 2,044,000 per year). Basically, the Top 1000 each get over 2 million views during the year, but might not be popular by year's end. For example, Olympic speedskater "Apolo Ohno" who set medals records in February, had only moderate pageviews by June 2010.

However, many traditional topics were still high-ranking among the top 2,500 topics: Socrates #1325, Plato #764, and Aristotle #631, with Physics #1386.