| Knol - Numbers to Lend Context to Google's Announcement |
The recent announcement that Google would launch Knol, dubbed by most as a Wikipedia competitor, has sparked controversy and even consternation among some. To provide context to the announcement (and a clear rationale for why Google would launch the service) Hitwise will share some stats on Wikipedia and other similar websites. (For a rundown of the project, see Danny Sullivan's post at Search Engine Land, "Google Knol: Google's Play to Aggregate Knowledge Pages" and to vote on whether this is a step too far for Google, see Duncan Riley's column at TechCrunch.)
Wikipedia ranked #15 among All Categories of websites in the week to 8th December 2007, based on market share of US Internet visits, and just over half (50.96%) of its traffic came directly from Google.com. The following chart shows the weekly market share of US Internet visits going to Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, Squidoo and Mahalo - the websites most often mentioned as competing with Knol. (We have not included Citizendium as it did not receive sufficient traffic in that week for it to rank.)
Wikipedia has been around for a long time but visits to the website just keep climbing. In the week to 8th December, the website's share of US Internet visits was up 32% year-on-year. The following chart shows the monthly share of US Internet visits to Wikipedia over the past three years - from 0.038% of all US Internet visits in December 2004 to 0.46% in November 2007 - a 12-fold increase! Wikipedia broke into the top 50 websites based on share of US Internet visits in December 2005 and then broke into the top 20 in September 2006.
In the week to 8th December, Wikipedia was the #2 downstream website from Google (after Google Images), receiving 2.13% of the search giant's traffic. All of the competing products mentioned earlier received most of their traffic from search engines. For example, Squidoo received 71.20% of its traffic from search.
To give you an idea of what information people are accessing on these services, the following table lists the top 10 search terms based on share of visits to Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers and Squidoo in the four weeks to 8th December 2007, excluding navigational search terms (such as 'wikipedia' and 'wikipedia.org').
Whatever Google's stated rationale for launching Knol, Wikipedia gets a pile of traffic from Google and the idea of hosting ads next to that traffic is no doubt appealing.
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| 1. |
naruto |
aquarius man and scorpio woman |
nfl cheerleader playoffs |
| 2. |
i am legend |
carmen winstead |
coach outlet |
| 3. |
frank lucas |
circlometry |
free google people finder |
| 4. |
kim kardashian |
yahoo question is water good for you fluids |
legal free music downloads |
| 5. |
tila tequila |
2 girls one cup |
foreclosed homes for sale |
| 6. |
youtube |
animal cloning pros/cons |
webkinz recipes |
| 7. |
pimp c |
two girls one cup |
coach shoes |
| 8. |
thanksgiving |
myspace-how to bold letters |
locks of love |
| 9. |
beowulf |
strengths of articles of confederation |
download free ringtones |
| 10. |
wwe |
bme pain olympics |
free ipod downloads |
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| Fantasy College Online - fc.runup.com.hk |
Fantasy College Online is an online resource for primary school children. In December 2007, this website increased its market share of traffic by 5067%, moving up from its November rank of 8901 to 328. The average time spent on the website increased from 1 minute and 46 seconds in November to 4 minutes and 31 seconds in December. The top 3 websites to drive traffic to Fantasy College Online in December were Run Up Game Official Forum - forum.runup.com.hk (17.88%), Yahoo! Hong Kong - hk.yahoo.com (14.57%) and Yahoo! Hong Kong Search - search.hk.yahoo.com (7.68%).
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| Travel - Transport |
Businesses which supply transport and related services to individuals including business and holiday travel - car hire, for instance. Airports and boarding facilities are listed here. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 05/01/2008 » Ranks by 'Visits'.
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| 73.6% |
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of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.
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|
| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
49.13% |
| 2. |
Travel |
20.39% |
| 3. |
Search Engines |
15.81% |
| 4. |
Transport |
11.65% |
| 5. |
Email Services |
10.98% |
| 6. |
Social Networking and Forums |
9.52% |
| 7. |
Portal Frontpages |
8.18% |
| 8. |
Aviation |
7.69% |
| 9. |
Business and Finance |
6.82% |
| 10. |
Entertainment |
6.57% |
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|
|
|
| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
40.56% |
| 2. |
Travel |
24.54% |
| 3. |
Transport |
14.16% |
| 4. |
Social Networking and Forums |
11.07% |
| 5. |
Aviation |
9.19% |
| 6. |
Search Engines |
8.29% |
| 7. |
Entertainment |
8.13% |
| 8. |
Portal Frontpages |
7.99% |
| 9. |
Email Services |
7.95% |
| 10. |
Commercial Airlines |
7.78% |
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