“Most-Viewed Articles on Wikipedia in 2012” by Johan Gunnarsson

By: Ali Raza  |   December 29th, 2012   |   News

A huge number of internet users are familiar with the world largest free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The heavily trafficked site has numerous pages that receive lots of hits. Even after being ranked as one of the most visited sites in the world, the website itself has never issued popularity stats of their own pages. However, Wikipedia has also never forbid external researchers to release such stats after analyzing their log files.

 

Therefore, Johan Gunnarsson, a software engineer, has released a list of “most-viewed articles on Wikipedia” for 2012 by analyzing a full year of log files from the encyclopaedia site. Here are the top ten pages that users have viewed the most along with view count:

 

1. Facebook 32 647 942

2. Wiki 29 613 759

3. Deaths in 2012 25 418 587

4. One Direction 22 351 637

5. The Avengers (2012 film) 22 268 644

6. Fifty Shades of Grey 21 779 423

7. 2012 phenomenon 20 619 920

8. The Dark Knight Rises 18 882 885

9. Google 18 508 719

10. The Hunger Games 18 431 626

 

Surprisingly, the Facebook article on Wikipedia stood at the top with 32.6 million views. This has left several people scratching their heads because the Facebook article page on Wikipedia talks about the social networks rivalry with MySpace and provides two year old stats of traffic. Both these pieces of information are ancient history at this point.

 

There can be just two best possible reasons behind the Facebook article receiving so many hits. First, users might end up on the Facebook page of Wikipedia after searching for its website on a search engine. Secondly, “It’s quite possible that these numbers confirm general, high-level interest and curiosity about top Web properties — their history, policies, background, etc,” says Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh. This might be the reason for the Google page that is ranked ninth on the list.

 

The Wiki paged grabbed the number two spot by receiving the second most hits after the Facebook page on Wikipedia. The list it self is quite diverse and comprises of pages that may be popular trends like the “Fifty Shades of Grey” page. Other popular pages have to do with entertainment and pop culture like the article on Irish boy band “One Direction” or movie pages like “The Avengers”, “The Dark Knight Rises” and “The Hunger Games”.

 

Source: AllThingsD