Top 100 Most Visited Articles on Wikipedia in 2009

It’s pretty amazing that Wikipedia exists at all, let alone that it has over 17.8 million articles in more than two hundred languages. Millions of people around the world use the free web-based encyclopedia daily, be it bloggers researching on a particular software, students working on their projects, teachers using it as an educational tool and the list goes on. Gradually, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit has become a household name. It’s not just its size or popularity, but also the way Wikipedia has evolved that makes it simple. Thousands of Web users volunteer their time and knowledge to help fulfill the community’s goal of providing every person in the world with a high-quality encyclopedia in their native language.

The non-commercial online encyclopedia which was launched on January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, has just surpassed the 10 million registered users mark, hitting a milestone. One of the world’s most visited sites on the Web, Wikipedia represents the future of publishing, and every company that produces information – from publishers to data providers – should be scared.

Here, we round up this year’s “Top 100 Most Visited Pages on Wikipedia”, according to statistics from Wikistics, a site which grabs data from Wikimedia Squid access-log stream and ranks them based on the number of visits. I was rather dismayed by the results. Surprisingly, what exactly people are looking for on Wikipedia is actually Wiki! Besides that, I didn’t know that people love reading the “obituaries”. ‘Deaths in 2009‘ was ranked #8, with close to 50,000 visits.

The King of Pop made it to the #3 placing and United States President Barack Obama was one of the most-viewed topics (#7). Social websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were ranked #5. #10 and #13 respectively.

1. Wiki (131,383 page hits per day)

2. The Beatles (111,896)

3. Michael Jackson (79,734)

4. Favicon.ico (78,077)

5. YouTube (72,318)

6. Wikipedia (52,542)

7. Barack Obama (49,401)

8. Deaths in 2009 (48,758)

9. United States (46,545)

10. Facebook (42,679)

11. Current events portal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events] (40,962)

12. World War II (29,736)

13. Twitter (28,511)

14. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (28,395)

15. Slumdog Millionaire (26,755)

16. Lil Wayne (26,210)

17. Adolf Hitler (25,481)

18. India (25,380)

19. Transformers 2 (24,842)

20. Scrubs (TV series) (24,758)

21. Sex (24,754)

22. Rhianna (24,670)

23. United Kingdom (24,300)

24. Abraham Lincoln (23,743)

25. Heroes (TV series) (23,569)

26. Watchmen (film) (23,544)

27. Lady GaGa (23,376)

28. Star Trek (film) (22,990)

29. 2009 Swine Flu outbreak (22,968)

30. Featured content portal (22,829)

31. Megan Fox (22,573)

32. Naruto (22,573)

33. Australia (22,544)

34. Canada (22,437)

35. World War I (22,307)

36. Vagina (22,295)

37. List of House episodes (21,950)

38. Japan (21,797)

39. Martin Luther King Jr (21,786)

40. Miley Cyrus (21,724)

41. Robert Pattinson (21,515)

42. Deadpool (comics) (21,264)

43. Twilight (2008 film) (21,158)

44. Windows 7 (21,018)

45. House (TV series) (20,882)

46. Terminator Salvation (20,743)

47. Kristen Stewart (20,538)

48. Internet Movie Database (20,422)

49. 2012 (20,347)

50. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (20,150)

51. Penis (20,076)

52. List of Presidents of the United States (19,884)

53. List of sex positions (19,876)

54. Masturbation (19,730)

55. William Shakespeare (19,714)

56. Farrah Fawcett (19,584)

57. Germany (19,514)

58. Swine flu (19,092)

59. Israel (19,077)

60. Google (19,070)

61. George W. Bush (18,964)

62. Global warming (18,809)

63. Wikipedia About Page (18,803)

64. New York City (18,251)

65. Tupac Shakur (18,186)

66. Taylor Swift (18,101)

67. Henry VIII of England (17,912)

68. Jade Goody (17,802)

69. Sexual intercourse (17,716)

70. The Notorious B.I.G. (17,572)

71. Human penis size (17,403)

72. 2009 in film (17,270)

73. Anal sex (17,052)

74. Twilight (novel) (17,040)

75. Natasha Richardson (17,001)

76. China (16,935)

77. American Idol (16,728)

78. MySpace (16,240)

79. France (16,198)

80. Metallica (16,110)

81. Relapse (album) (16,099)

82. List of Family Guy episodes (15,961)

83. Bleach (manga) (15,947)

84. Russia (15,674)

85. Mickey Rourke (15,616)

86. Jonas Brothers (15,561)

87. Vietnam War (15,306)

88. Kim Kardashian (15,213)

89. Lost (season 5) (15,107)

90. Selena Gomez (15,086)

91. Wolverine (comics) (15,062)

92. Family Guy (15,013)

93. Valentine’s Day (14,924)

94. Hotmail (14,880)

95. The Dark Knight (film) (14,782)

96. America’s Next Top Model (14,752)

97. Mexico (14,709)

98. Batman (14,654)

99. List of Heroes episodes (14,652)

100. Pornography (14,650)

About the Author
Brad is a 15-Year-Old student living in the United States. His areas of interest include IT, web design, computer repairs, and music composing. In the web design field, he is the web designer of my school’s film festival website, as well as his own site GigaBlog.
Leave a Reply




68 Comments
  1. This list prove wikipedia is still full of porn…

    Reply
  2. thecrazyjogger says:

    Link ALL the wiki names to the wiki pages ..

    Reply
  3. pesho says:

    So Amazing
    Thanks

    Reply
  4. the list given below is quite wonderful.

    Reply
  5. macewan says:

    Wondering if this means the readership is mostly young males… or adults wanting to get their laugh on.

    Reply
  6. nikuniku says:

    When it comes to penis enlargement or marire penis most people tend to buy different accessories which really work (some better than others) but I don't get it with the pills. Would people really expect to grow their equipment with pills ?

    Reply
  7. Deano says:

    favicon.ico at number 4! Wow Obama is losing his poularity! Could that be a glinch of the software, I'd be surprised if that many people had even heard of such a specialised thing.

    Reply
  8. Name says:

    Basically this shows me that the readership of wikipedia is male! Scifi and Sex…

    Reply
  9. Prakash Murthy says:

    Check out Seth Godin's take on this list! http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09...

    Reply
  10. I would have thought that many of the most visited articles would have been more on the academic side, but after looking at the list, it makes sense that these hot topics would be searched more and lead to a Wikipedia page for information on what they are.

    Reply
  11. dmoore0021 says:

    Pleased to see that pornography made it into the top 100 – was worried there for a minute…

    Reply
  12. Casey says:

    That is some crazy stuff right there.

    Reply
  13. Name says:

    Transformers 2 redirects to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so they should be combined. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would then have 53,237 page hits and rank #6.

    Reply
  14. dips says:

    the most important fact to be remembered is, the average person googles for something and then ends up in Wikipedia. So, 'wiki' coming up as top result is not surprising at all. Neither are the other search results. Imagine googling for “michael Jackson, death, 2009″ – you will either end up in wikipedia for MJ, or Wikipedia result for 'deaths in 2009″. Voila!

    Reply
  15. max power says:

    I did google for “michael Jackson, death, 2009″ (with and without quotes) and there was not a single wikipedia link on the first page of results.

    Reply
  16. rizache says:

    Its an English list. Nothing for other versions?

    Reply
  17. sup says:

    Vagina: 22,295
    Penis: 20,076
    “Statistics show that although the vagina is still the most popular when it comes to reproductive organs, we can note a drastic increase in the demand for penis, which has overtaken last year's favourite, Masturbation, by almost 300 hits. This clearly goes to show that people have realized they need better knowledge about just what it is they're dealing with, before attempting any serious fapping.”

    Reply
  18. clutterbells says:

    Nice list. Interesting how much popular culture and as such the people with the most exposure anyway are researched on Wikipedia.

    Reply
  19. Simon says:

    Very much doubt that wiki is the most viewed page – probably just the most common search string, which probably just means people are typing in, let's say, “Beatles wiki” as a search term, rather than simply “the Beatles”. I've done it. You've probably done it. And according to the numbers it looks like everyone else has too. But as many times as I've typed wiki into a search field as one of the terms, never once have I visited the “wiki” wikipedia page. I'm not sure it even exists…Just checked. It does. So strike that last. But I stand by the other stuff!

    Reply
  20. bestpenisenlargement says:

    I am Very thank full the owner of this blog. Because of this blog is very imformative for me, – Best Penis Enlargement – We list and review the Top Penis Enlargement in market

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  21. samorchard says:

    Some surprises which is interesting but think it is funny how many references to porn there are. The industry is huge – I did a search for penis enlargement just because of the comments here and the relation to the post and in google there are 3290000 results – so the popularity of the subject is huge

    Reply
  22. LisaMonroe says:

    I must admit that I thought the most visited articles wouldve been scientifical, but I guess I am wrong looking at the top.Michael Jackson on the third place and I guess he entered the top 1 mounth ago.
    _________________________
    Aditorial Articles

    Reply
  23. victorreyes says:

    excelente tener todos estos datos en español. mil gracias

    Reply
  24. Emma says:

    Its really good this list. I love Twilight is amazing.
    kisses

    Emma

    Reply
  25. ryan95 says:

    LOL! from sex to hitler, to human penis size to Lady Gaga…

    Wikipedia IS full of sex : 100. Pornography
    88. Kim K.
    76. China (lol)
    73. Anal sex
    71. Human penis size
    (lol) > 69. Sexual intercourse
    61. George W. Bush
    54. Masturbation
    53. List of sex positions
    51. Penis
    36. Vagina (wonder why Vaginae are are more popular than penises)
    21. Sex
    17. Adolf Hitler

    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

    Reply
  26. mee!!! says:

    Gosh.. how “appropriate”…not

    Reply
  27. mee!!! says:

    Gosh.. how “appropriate”…not

    Reply
  28. I can’t wait to read lots of your posts because this nice information, valuable and excellent design, as share good stuff with good ideas and concepts, lots of great information and inspiration, both of which we all need, thanks for all the enthusiasm to offer such helpful information here.

    Reply
  29. DanielMerry23 says:

    Quite nice, i was looking at the most popular topics in the net, you can also check out Trends Buzz for the most popular right now

    Reply
  30. wagonlover says:

    Adolf Hitler is there because of all the people playing that game where you have to get from a random page to his page in as few clicks as possible.

    Reply
  31. Yeahhhh says:

    Yeah right, pornography is last? pfffff

    Reply
  32. Shirley says:

    I’m not surprised Michael Jackson made the list. Great guy indeed :) .

    Reply
  33. Awesome post, very nice.

    Reply
  34. This is really something I can understand. Thanks for the article I have subscribed to your rss.

    Reply
  35. microtaha says:

    Have set up a topic in the same Alsegh but genitive link each article
    http://microtaha.blogspot.com/2009/09/100-2009.html

    Reply
  36. Lots of Great information in your posting, I favorited your blog post so I can visit again in the near future, Thanks

    Reply
  37. More infos about this topic will be very much worth to me

    Reply
  38. Much appreciated , cool info and bookmarked yout blog!

    Reply
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