Wikipedia Traffic Drops as AI Answers Eat the Free Encyclopedia

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The Wikimedia Basis introduced this week that human visitors to Wikipedia fell roughly 8% between Could and August in comparison with the identical interval final 12 months. The decline got here into focus after the muse found that subtle bots, primarily from Brazil, had been disguising themselves as human guests.

After updating its detection methods in Could, the muse reclassified visitors information and located a lot of the unusually excessive visitors in Could and June got here from bots constructed to evade detection. The revised numbers revealed what many in publishing already knew: fewer individuals go to Wikipedia immediately as a result of search engines like google and yahoo now present solutions on their very own pages.

“After making this revision, we’re seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the previous few months, amounting to a lower of roughly 8% as in comparison with the identical months in 2024,” Marshall Miller, wrote. “We consider that these declines mirror the impression of generative AI and social media on how individuals search data, particularly with search engines like google and yahoo offering solutions on to searchers, typically based mostly on Wikipedia content material.”

AI isn’t just killing Wikipedia. Information from Pew Analysis confirmed median year-over-year referral visitors from Google Search to premium publishers has decreased virtually each week throughout Could and June 2025, with losses outpacing positive aspects two-to-one. Practically 60% of all Google searches find yourself in an AI abstract as an alternative of selling the studying of the particular supply.

Publishers throughout industries are sounding alarms and resorting to lawsuits to get some safety. Danielle Coffey, who leads the Information/Media Alliance representing greater than 2,000 shops, mentioned Google is utilizing writer content material with out compensation whereas providing no significant approach to decide out with out disappearing from search totally.

“It is parasitic, it is unsustainable, and it poses an actual existential menace to many in our trade,” she mentioned.



The quantity of AI content material on-line is rising quick. Analysis from search engine marketing agency Graphite discovered that as of November 2024, virtually half of latest net articles have been generated utilizing AI in some kind, up from simply 5% earlier than ChatGPT’s launch. A put up by Ask Perplexity on X claimed AI content material went from round 5% in 2020 to 48% by Could 2025, with projections saying 90% or extra by subsequent 12 months.

The Wikimedia Basis mentioned fewer visits to Wikipedia might imply that fewer volunteers develop and enrich the content material, and fewer particular person donors assist the work. The muse is responding by implementing insurance policies for third-party entry, creating a framework for attribution, and experimenting with methods to carry free data to youthful audiences on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

The muse mentioned Wikipedia’s human data is extra worthwhile to the world than ever earlier than, 25 years since its creation. The query is whether or not the platforms utilizing that data will assist the ecosystem that creates it.

The Wikipedia Basis didn’t instantly reply to a request for feedback by Decrypt.