The Most Viewed Wikipedia Articles from 2007 to 2019

A quick visit to Wikipedia's home page reveals that the English version has almost six million articles. Such development is possible thanks to the titanic effort of some contributors, but at the same time, Wikipedia's priority is to add more users. The best way to attract them is by keeping its most popular articles updated, which brings us to a question: Which are they? Which articles have been the most viewed on Wikipedia in recent years? Here we have a very good comparison, with data from 2007 to the present.

There's no point in denying it. I need to visit Wikipedia several times a day, and the reason is simple: regardless of what you think about the quality of its articles, it's an excellent starting point for getting basic information. Even Google's search engine doesn't hesitate to show Wikipedia excerpts in its results. The encyclopedia holds a privileged spot in the Top 10 of the most visited websites, and unless a global catastrophe happens, it can only keep growing.

Now, what do users search on Wikipedia? Which are the most viewed articles? A small YouTube channel called Data Geek gives us the answer through an animated graph. The data covers twelve years from 2007 to 2019, and focuses on the English edition of the encyclopedia:

The Battle for the Top Spot

The animation begins in December 2007 and January 2008 with the top article of the United States and Harry Potter trading blows. However, that dispute takes a backseat due to the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, who at the time was still a senator from Illinois. The gap between Obama's article and the rest only widened, especially after the start of his term.

The Beatles and Michael Jackson

One of the most interesting cases to highlight is The Beatles, whose article grew throughout 2009 and claimed the number one spot. But in June of that year, Michael Jackson passed away, and a large part of the world went to Wikipedia to see what it had published about the singer. In 2010, the United States article returned to the top, Lady Gaga displaced Michael, the series Glee proved its popularity, and the text about India kept gaining readers.

Recent Explosions

Some of the so-called 'explosions' were driven by Game of Thrones and, of course, the current president of the United States, Donald Trump. The animation concludes with data from January 2019, in relative stability. What are the only historical references? World War II and Adolf Hitler.