Wikipedia gets less love from Google

[weeks]

Roy Hinkis, SW's head of SEO, says the downgrade is a genuine mystery.

Can Webmasterworld solve this mystery? Hmmmmm, maybe...

Wikipedia suddenly lost a massive amount of traffic from Google
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-sees-traffic-from-google-decline-2015-8 [businessinsider.com]

One of the major trends happening at Google is the company's preference for inserting its own content above the content of other non-Google web sites, even when those sites may be better resources than Google itself.

Hinkis suspects that Google has changed its search algorithm to favour actual brands and company web sites over the Wikipedia entries that are about them.

The problem is that a few months ago that click might have gone to Wikipedia. And in fact the info in the Google box is drawn from Wikipedia. So on the one hand, this is good for Wikipedia (its info is featured prominently and the box does give Wikipedia a link). But on the other, Wikipedia thrives on clicks and this box is designed to save you from actually clicking through if you only need the bare bones info.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 1:50 pm (utc) on Aug 14, 2015]

[RedBar]

Welcome to my world...wait until Google's stolen 90+% of your traffic and see what happens when you complain...nothing!

The Internet is free, everyone knows that, all the information posted out there, even by scrapers like Wikipedia, is generated by people and companies who just do it for nothing so that Google can make vast profits from it without giving anything in return to the real creators.

[tangor]

I sense a fit storm coming!

[creeking]

May: 2.7 billion
July: 2.4 billion



school's out. summertime!

[lucy24]

school's out. summertime!

Yah, seriously, is that all they're looking at? I don't even think of myself as an academic site, but traffic is always lower in the summer. That's just the way it is.

<tangent>
It always annoys me when businesses post information comparing their performance to last quarter. It's far more useful to compare to the same quarter of earlier years.
</tangent>

[Lapizuli]

Hey, that explains it. I use Google to find Wikipedia just out of habit/laziness. But I've been having to scroll further down - though they're still on page one for most of my searches, so I'm not USUALLY driven to direct navigation. These are general searches - "widgethood," not "help with widgetification." So either my microcosmic experience suggests nothing at all, or that Wikipedia's lost mostly long-tail searches, or that they've just been booted down the page overall and people really do click on the first result or two most. (I prefer to extrapolate from my point in the universe - makes me feel all pre-Copernican.)

[lucy24]

just out of habit/laziness

Nah, that's just common sense. Finding things on wikipedia if you don't already know the article title is notoriously next-to-impossible. It's simpler to let a search engine do the work for you.

Now, personally I haven't noticed wikipedia being any further down the page lately, but that's just my searches...

[tangor]

If wiki is what you're really looking for, do your general search first then (if you are a FF person), click thee search engine drop down next to the search and get just wiki results. Guaranteed they are all at the top.... :)

[EditorialGuy]

Dunno about Wikipedia's traffic from Google, but its rankings have been down for quite a while in my subject area. That's true of several other megasites that used to dominant in the rankings, too. These days, Google seems to be showing more respect to expert niche sites.

[weeks]

My original post was much more snarky, the mod edited it to be more clear. As someone who has, in the past, had subject matter e pert site listed below Wiki, I was glad to see that this might be happening. The school is out theory sound good, but I hope EditorialGuy is right. I appreciate Wiki, but should it be the number one source on so many things?

[Ebuzz]

Just be glad they haven't put up Adsense until now, otherwise they would be WikiAnswers Reloaded, and I think we are all tired of content farms, especially those that leach off the efforts of others (for free) to make insane profits for themselves.

[Ralph_Slate]

Wikipedia still seems to be above my site, even though they built their articles with information from my site.

Wikipedia also went full SSL in June. That results in an order of magnitude fewer referrers showing from them in Google Analytics.

[MrSavage]

I love any articles with some eye balls that talks about the answer box and how that is terrific or perhaps not so terrific for traffic. There is only one result. See, it's not the answer box, it's because of summer! It's not raining because of the clouds either. I'm just happy to see discussion about them losing traffic. I think with whatever is going on, it's going to come out in the wash. Regarding the summer traffic conspiracy, don't you think the people involved in Wikipedia might be intelligent to know the difference? If this was their first year in business and their first summer experience, sure, I'll buy the summer nonsense. What fools would be ranting about lost traffic on a scale such as this if it was just a "typical" seasonal gap. Surely they are smart enough to look at stats before coming out with something like this.

[indyank]

I don't think wikipedia will have anything against this as this would actually help them save bandwidth....anyway this might not be impacting them from getting donations, does it? and they are already "well compensated" by(for) being placed on KG, aren't they? :)

KG gives the "facts" while people looking for brands are not always looking for facts...

[RedBar]

Why do so many people believe that because it's the summer in the northern hemsphere that "everyone" is on holiday?

Sure, some people are however not everyone is lucky enough to get 3-4 weeks off from work, many only get 2 weeks plus many businesses have staggered holidays, they can't afford to shut down for long periods, Xmas and Easter may be an exception, however this great myth that huge cities have come to a grinding holiday halt is ridiculous ... people are always having holidays all year round, period.

Sure I remember when I was young that major production centres in the UK did have Sheffield week, Barnsley, Huddersfield etc however they were still spread out over a couple of months ... to be honest I don't even know if they do this any more.

Oh, and the sun is shining here today, should I expect less traffic? :-)

Then again is it snowing where you are and should you expect less traffic?

People's attitudes and usage of the www is changing mostly because of mobile. One year ago in the UK (pop 64-65 mil.) there were about 3 million smartphones on 4G, figures released a couple of weeks ago showed there are now 23 million. If the same, or similar, has happened across several countries, and Facebook has been the huge beneficiary of this, traffic to other large sites is bound to have been affected.

[dereksmalls5]

Can I piggyback on this thread, because it's vaguely relevant.

I've just noticed that referrals coming from yell has dropped like a stone to zero starting from July 28th. Has any else seen this, or is it just me? Has yells visibility or the way it appears in the SERP's suddenly changed?

I'm in the UK by the way.

[EditorialGuy]

FWIW, an 11-percent drop in traffic hardly seems headline-worthy (or "massive"), especially at a time of year when school reports and quiz nights may be taking a back seat to other pursuits.

[RedBar]

especially at a time of year when school reports and quiz nights

Enlighten me please, what are you referring to?

Edit: Ok, sorry, mis-read it!

[Ralph_Slate]

I've just noticed that referrals coming from yell has dropped like a stone to zero starting from July 28th. Has any else seen this, or is it just me? Has yells visibility or the way it appears in the SERP's suddenly changed?

Could it be because they went to HTTPS? I noticed a similar thing with Wikipedia, and learned that HTTPS does not send referrers to a non-HTTPS site.

Ralph

[dereksmalls5]

Ralph, you are absolutely right...they have gone to https now.

How would this visitor be counted? as direct?