Wikipedia, the world’s largest informational website, has revealed that the number of users visiting its site has dropped by approximately 8% over the past year, with AI search systems and video-based social platforms being identified as the primary causes.
According to a report, Wikipedia reported that over the last year, the number of humans reading or visiting its website has decreased by around 8%.
This decline became particularly evident in recent months when Wikipedia updated its system and discovered that most of the traffic in May and June was actually from automated machines (bots) rather than human users.
Wikipedia attributes the traffic decline largely to the fact that search engines now display direct answers to users’ queries, which reduces the need for people to visit external websites like Wikipedia. As a result, platforms like Wikipedia have seen a drop in user visits.
Moreover, young people are increasingly turning to social media platforms for information, where videos are more accessible and preferred over opening external links.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, says that although fewer people are now visiting the website, they are still accessing Wikipedia’s information through other means. In other words, while direct website visits are declining, access to its content remains.
However, this trend has some negative implications. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, if the number of visitors continues to decrease, the volunteers who write and update Wikipedia content may become less active. Similarly, the number of donors could also decline, making it harder to cover the operational costs of running the website.
The Wikimedia Foundation says that it is taking various steps to address the issue. These include making information sources more transparent so users can clearly see where the data comes from, and forming special teams to reach new readers.
