Wikipedia's popularity

As google trend analysis indicates the volume of usage of a query,it can at times be interesting to see how the search of certain terms has evolved over time. A google trend for the word ' Wikipedia' yielded this graph.


Absence of data on the vertical scale does not give the exact number of searches in 2007, but definitely is indicative enough of how the trend has caught on.
Had to be so..Wikipedia is the primary source of information on various issues today and the very fact that it is positioned as an encyclopedia, adds to the credibility factor. I do understand debates are on over the relevance and accuracy of content hosted at the site, but that is beside the point.

Digging deeper, a Technorati search for wikipedia yielded 375,522 blog posts and a blogpulse trend for wikipedia indicated an interesting trend.


The jump in April 2007 probably coincided with April Fool's day-Wikipedia's thorough compilation of April Fool's day coverage across newspapers, websites, magazines.It also included television shows corresponding to the day. The single page dedicated to April Fool's day had 436 outbound links.Considering that wikipedia's article structure encourages linking within and outside wikipedia,and that the prime factor in Google's search results algorithm is the no. of links connected to a given webpage, wikipedia gets a shot at very high rankings on keyword queries.

No wonder then, that the Report published by Pew Internet and American Life Project in conjunction with Hitwise lists Wikipedia as one of the most heavily visited websites on the internet, courtesy the vastness of data on the site, the American affinity to search engines and the convenience of search.

Maybe someone can still throw more light on why Wikipedia's blogpulse graph shows the upswing in April 2007.