Report shows Wikipedia audience growth over past year
An independent report released last week indicated that the number of visitors to Wikipedia had nearly quadrupled during the past year. It also included a variety of information that helps to place Wikipedia's growth in perspective.
The report was released on Thursday by Nielsen//NetRatings, an arm of the firm that conducts the television Nielsen ratings. An accompanying press release focused on websites it classified in the "educational reference" category, which it indicated had grown by 22% from September 2004 to September 2005. It identified Wikipedia as the fastest-growing site in the category, with a 289% increase in the number of unique visitors over that period.
While such figures are often the result of starting from a small base number, which can produce high percentages on modest growth, this is not the case for Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia has established itself as a leading reference site, as indicated in an earlier report from Hitwise (see archived story). Already as of a year ago, based on the Nielsen report, Wikipedia's audience was larger than the current audience of the second fastest-growing site in the category, Yahoo! Education.