# Is there any way to get view counts for Wikipedia articles? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 26, 2011, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729 "2011-02-26T19:07:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2011, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/1 "2011-02-26T19:07:06Z")
I started Wikipedia articles for a couple of old video games a few years ago. Is there any way to find out how many times an article has been accessed? I don’t see any. It’s frustrating to write something and not know if anybody has read it, aside from the few other people who have made changes to my articles. ---
**Author:** ![computergeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@computergeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/computergeek)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2011, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/2 "2011-02-26T20:13:46Z")
I believe Wikipedia’s admins know that kind of information. You could ask on the article’s Talk page if anyone knows how to get that information, though it’s possible it’s not releasable to the general public. ETA: I just did a search at Wikipedia and at this link [Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 February 5 - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2010_February_5), read the paragraph Graph representation of Wiki. A person wants to make a graph nodes and asks how to access various information and the responses include how to get access counts. Hopefully this helps ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/3 "2011-02-26T21:21:45Z")
I think what you need is the [Wikipedia article traffic statistics](http://stats.grok.se/) page. ---
**Author:** ![computergeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@computergeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/computergeek)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/4 "2011-02-27T00:19:50Z")
> [@ctnguy](#): > > I think what you need is the [Wikipedia article traffic statistics](http://stats.grok.se/) page. That’s what I ended up finding, though it appears you have to do it by month. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/5 "2011-02-27T04:11:35Z")
> [@ctnguy](#): > > I think what you need is the [Wikipedia article traffic statistics](http://stats.grok.se/) page. Huh! I wrote once a completely unimportant article about a minuscule French village and I see that the even more irrelevant English version has 150-200 views/month :eek: (weirdly enough, the French version has less views, about 100-150) I would have guessed 2-3 views/year. And I’m left wondering who could be reading it and for what reason 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/6 "2011-02-27T04:43:22Z")
I imagine that it includes visits by search engine spiders. I know that Google, at least, seems to scan Wikipedia pages very frequently, judging by how quickly changes appear in its results. ---
**Author:** ![computergeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@computergeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/computergeek)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/7 "2011-02-27T04:53:35Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I would have guessed 2-3 views/year. And I’m left wondering who could be reading it and for what reason 😕 Perhaps searching deeper in Wikipedia’s Help section might dig up a tool to discover that. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/8 "2011-02-27T05:22:24Z")
Interesting thread. Partly posting to keep tabs on this, partly subscribed to marvel that a number of really minor articles I started have gotten 100+ hits daily for months on end. Neat tools. I’d love to see more neat tools to analyze Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/9 "2011-02-27T09:04:39Z")
I think that, sometimes, people fail to grasp the magnanimity of the Internet and specifically Wikipedia. Around 100 visitors makes perfect sense for an unimportant article. [ > [@](#): > > In June 2007 a one-time measurement was made of number of visitors to all Wikimedia projects combined [10]. The bottom line: all Wikimedia projects combined received roughly 7,000,000,000+ (more than seven billion) visits in that month. This results in an average view rate of more than 2500 Wikimedia pages per second, 24 hours per day. In all likelihood more than 99% of those visits are directed to the Wikipedia project. ]([Wikimedia in figures/Wikipedia - Meta-Wiki](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_in_figures_-_Wikipedia)) That’s 7 billion page views a month, or 84 billion a year, and that’s 4 years ago. It’s probably even larger now. To get 100 views in a year would only be a little more than 1 look in every billion views. And, using that same page the quote is linked to, there aren’t weren’t even a billion articles on Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/10 "2011-02-27T09:31:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > … magnanimity… This word doesn’t make any sense in this context. I think the word you were looking for is “size.” ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/11 "2011-02-27T16:43:26Z")
> [@ctnguy](#): > > I think what you need is the [Wikipedia article traffic statistics](http://stats.grok.se/) page. Thanks. One of my articles got about 500 hits this month. The other got about 1,000. Search engines would tend to access both articles at the same rate, right? So that means the more popular one probably has at least 500 real hits? ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-get-view-counts-for-wikipedia-articles/572729/12 "2011-02-27T16:49:14Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I think that, sometimes, people fail to grasp the magnanimity of the Internet and specifically Wikipedia. Around 100 visitors makes perfect sense for an unimportant article. I’m involved in a pretty obscure hobby, and most of the articles I’ve had a hand in get 10 or fewer views per day. The 100+ view-per-day articles are outliers, and the tools provided are letting me see why.