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Google eating into Wikipedia page views?

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia used by millions around the world, lost nearly 10 per cent of its page-views last year.
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia used by millions around the world, lost nearly 10 per cent of its page-views last year.
NEW DELHI: Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia used by millions around the world, lost nearly 10 per cent of its page-views last year. That's a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. It's most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Wikipedia declined by 12 per cent, those of German version slid by 17 per cent and the Japanese version lost 9 per cent.

While Wikipedia's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Wikipedia users.

Indian language versions of Wikipedia are bucking the trend. Hindi page-views increased by a huge 34 per cent, Bengali by an even bigger 46 per cent and Malayalam by 36 per cent. Lesser increases were seen in Marathi (4 per cent) and Telugu (1 per cent). Only in the Tamil version have page views dipped by 11 per cent. Detailed data is available on the Wikimedia Foundation website.

Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is created and edited by readers around the world. It is the world's sixth most visited website, with 523 million unique visitors last year, according to comScore, the independent tracker.

Wikimedia has not yet got its teeth into the problem. Jay Walsh, adviser to Wikimedia Foundation, a California based non-profit that manages Wikipedia, told TOI that while page-views have indeed declined, the data "may contain significant anomalies".

"There is a possibility this fluctuation is due to how our servers record mobile traffic data or how certain applications may be accessing our data. We will not make any conclusive statements about the cause of these page-view fluctuations until a thorough review is complete" he said.

Some internet observers have pointed out that the decline in Wikipedia's page-views begins with the launching of Google's Knowledge Graphs project in January 2013. Google searches now show a summary on the right hand side of the screen with links to similar topics and images. Those wanting a simple bit of information - say Sachin Tendulkar's date of birth- don't have to leave Google at all as the Knowledge Graph summary will show the date.

Although Walsh does not think Google was impacting Wikipedia page-views, Clay Shirky, associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for internet and Security told TOI that he suspected much of the page-view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs.

"If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further]," Shirky said.

While this helps with part of Wikipedia's mission -- getting information to the widest group of people possible -- and will reduce bandwidth costs, at least on the margins, it threatens people's appreciation for Wikipedia, Shirky noted.

"It becomes a background service for Google, rather than something people use directly, which could have a negative effect on both edits and donations," he said.

But there is another dimension of the problem - the number of times editing is done, and the number of editors involved is also declining. For the English Wikipedia, there was a 15 per cent decline in the number of edits done between November 2012 and November 2013. Active editors declined by four per cent and new editors declined by seven per cent.

The global rise of smartphones and users shifting away from desktops could be the reason for this as editing is difficult on mobiles. Wikipedia's mobile page-views increased by a whopping 51 per cent while non-mobile views declined by 20 per cent last year. In India, Hindi Wikipedia's page-views zoomed up by 115 per cent on mobiles but rose only by 7 per cent on non-mobile platforms. Walsh said that they had made "major headway" in developing new services and features for mobile users and editors.

While Wikipedia is promising to come out with reasons for the decline in the "next few weeks" it is a worrying time for the inquisitive, as their source of solace seems to be faltering.
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