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Google is the most popular search engine and provides a valuable tool for Wikipedia to know what search terms people are using most frequently to find Wikipedia. Most of these visits will be newcomers, seeing Wikipedia for the first time. So it would be good for Wikipedia lovers to watch such statistics and to make sure those pages most frequently visited by new guests are in top shape.
A good impression can lead to a new user. New users may add more content and knowledge to Wikipedia.
Pages to Watch
General Google Search Patterns and Trends
Google has a web page called Google Zeitgeist about search patterns and trends for the web in general. This can tell us at Wikipedia what people are looking for. Do we have content for them to find? If not, it would be good for us to have as high priority the creating of such a listing, especially for the most recent top ten searches.
Ideally, the Google Zeitgeist stats should match the Google to Wikipedia links stats.
Google to Wikipedia links
Information like this can tell us
- What the most visited pages are for people coming from Google -- newcomer traffic.
- What people are searching for, that happens to be found at Wikipedia
Sample statistics from Fri, 7 March 2003: (listing those articles with the highest number of visitors sent to us by Google.)
- 1150 Famous French people
- 418 Mercury (element)
- 402 Famous Spanish people
- 372 Famous African-Americans
- 368 Science fiction themes
- 312 Recent celebrity deaths
- 304 Biographical Listing
- 268 World War II
- 252 The Station nightclub fire
- 230 Fred Rogers
- 199 Leet
- 198 Napoleonic Code
- 171 U.S. Supreme Court
- 161 George W. Bush
- 155 Body piercing
- 145 Native American
- 145 English Civil War
- 138 Elizabethan era
- 130 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
- 129 President of the United States
- 125 Old school rap
- 122 Prince Albert piercing
- 119 Natural logarithm
- 116 Discovery of the chemical elements
- 112 U.S. presidential election, 1844
- 111 List of United States Supreme Court cases
- 109 Timeline of inventions
- 109 Mark Antony
- 109 1960s
- 106 United States
- 105 Protest song
- 103 Nuclear weapon
- 102 List of Greek mythological characters
- 99 Mount Vesuvius
- 98 Steamboat Willie
- 97 Incest
- 92 Nudism
- 92 Definition of music
- 91 Evolutionary timeline
- 91 Egyptian language
- 91 Cancer (constellation)
- 89 Famous gay lesbian or bisexual people
- 89 Battle of New Orleans
- 88 Famous Swedish people
- 88 Donald Rumsfeld
- 87 September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack
- 87 Roman Empire
- 87 Famous women in history
- 85 Terrorist incidents
- 84 Big O notation
- 82 World capital cities
- 82 U.S. plan to invade Iraq
- 80 Nudity
- 78 Torture
- 77 List of famous Italians
- 77 Battle of Marston Moor
- 77 Backus-Naur form
- 74 Prime number
- 74 List of places in London, England
- 73 Medieval siege weaponry
- 72 Maria Theresa of Austria
- 70 Prime Minister of Canada
- 70 Photographer
- 70 Capital punishment
- 69 United States Army
- 69 Anti-globalization movement
- 68 List of French monarchs
- 68 Deity
- 68 Aircraft carrier
- 67 Wikipedia:Public domain resources
- 67 Vulva
- 67 Greek mythology
Some more recent stats would be nice. The stats could be archived.