Wednesday, October 19, 2005
You Could Look It Up:
"Published: October 19, 2005
(After October 27, 2005, this article will only be available to eStat Database subscribers.)
Wikipedia and other education and reference sites are seeing big traffic gains.
Nielsen//NetRatings reports that Wikipedia's unique audience increased from about 3.3 million in September 2004 to 12.8 million by September 2005. Wikipedia, which bills itself as "the free encyclopedia," is a constantly growing and changing compendium of information about hundreds of thousands of topics. Unlike standard encyclopedias, the content comes from the Web site's users, who can create, edit and delete information on the site at will. The site has administrators who monitor these changes and prevent, or correct, abuse or incorrect updates.
Yahoo! Education, while trailing Wikipedia's overall traffic, also experienced significant growth, rising to second place among educational reference Web sites. Yahoo! Education contains reference materials such as an encyclopedia plus information about schools and colleges.
Users of these sites tend to be over 35, and to have at least some college background. "The 'wiki' phenomenon offers the added element of user interaction, which appeals to college-educated Web users' sense of altruism by allowing them to add or correct online content," said Gerry Davidson, senior media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.
Wikipedia has become one of the top sites referenced from search engines. According to Hitwise, it ranks number nine among sites accessed directly after Google, and 71% of visitors to Wikipedia arrive from a search engine. The top 20 list of search terms that brought visitors to Wikipedia from search engines during September 2005 is fairly diverse, including queries about current events, history and concepts.
To learn more about how people are educating themselves through the Web, try a search for "education" in the eStat Database."
"Published: October 19, 2005
(After October 27, 2005, this article will only be available to eStat Database subscribers.)
Wikipedia and other education and reference sites are seeing big traffic gains.
Nielsen//NetRatings reports that Wikipedia's unique audience increased from about 3.3 million in September 2004 to 12.8 million by September 2005. Wikipedia, which bills itself as "the free encyclopedia," is a constantly growing and changing compendium of information about hundreds of thousands of topics. Unlike standard encyclopedias, the content comes from the Web site's users, who can create, edit and delete information on the site at will. The site has administrators who monitor these changes and prevent, or correct, abuse or incorrect updates.
Yahoo! Education, while trailing Wikipedia's overall traffic, also experienced significant growth, rising to second place among educational reference Web sites. Yahoo! Education contains reference materials such as an encyclopedia plus information about schools and colleges.
Users of these sites tend to be over 35, and to have at least some college background. "The 'wiki' phenomenon offers the added element of user interaction, which appeals to college-educated Web users' sense of altruism by allowing them to add or correct online content," said Gerry Davidson, senior media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.
Wikipedia has become one of the top sites referenced from search engines. According to Hitwise, it ranks number nine among sites accessed directly after Google, and 71% of visitors to Wikipedia arrive from a search engine. The top 20 list of search terms that brought visitors to Wikipedia from search engines during September 2005 is fairly diverse, including queries about current events, history and concepts.
To learn more about how people are educating themselves through the Web, try a search for "education" in the eStat Database."
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