Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
1–10 of 299 posts
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#2Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them.
For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#3Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!
Exactly. Wikipedia's content is CC-licensed precisely to allow reuse of all kinds, including this.
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#4I skimmed the article. People search google; it gives a paragraph from Wikipedia. That answers their question, and they go on their way; this has reduced the number of people that click on the link to see Wikipedia.
I fail to see the problem. Wikipedia doesn't show ads, and isn't run for profit. If people get the tidbit of info they needed, they've been served. If they didn't click on Wikipedia to get it, that means Wikipedia saves money. This seems like a good thing to me.
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#5Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!
I believe it's a big problem that people don't know anymore where their "information" comes from (and who paid for it).
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#6Putting aside the criticisms of Google for its near monopoly on search, I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that Wikipedia "loses" a visit just because Google happens to be able to deliver the desired information on the search results page itself.
In many cases, visitors aren't using Google search because they want a webpage. They're using Google search because they want an answer to a question. Google is answering that question without them having to click through to another site, and visitors are fine with that.
Likewise, I wouldn't say that all of the online calculator websites are "losing" visits just because I plug 3^3 into my search bar and get 27.
Note that in some cases, Google has license agreements with the websites from which they gather that information, so while the visitor may never land on the source website, that source website still gets remuneration.
Besides, if you think it's bad that Google is providing content from other sites so that visitors never have to land on the source site, just wait until you hear about AMP ...
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#7"Out of nearly 890,000 monthly searches worldwide, only 30,000 actually become search visits to a website"
Wow, I never thought about it, but I be my searches vs. clicks ratio is about the same for many searches. Google must being doing this on purpose, which must be hurting many sites. I'm sure I've read about this before, but I'm not sure I've seen those numbers before.
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#8Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!
People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from.
Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up all the data and bring control of it in-house, and we would only see whichever facts Google chooses for us. I'm not sure that would be a good thing.
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#9Putting aside the criticisms of Google for its near monopoly on search, I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that Wikipedia "loses" a visit just because Google happens to be able to deliver the desired information on the search results page itself. In many cases, visitors aren't using Google search because they want a webpage. They're using Google search because they want an answer to a question. Google is answ…
Right. This is not "Google stealing clicks", it's users saving clicks because they were only interested in looking up that kind of basic information. It optimizes time and effort.
Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
#10Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!
People perceive that they can get the information for free from Google, so they're a lot less likely to donate to Wikipedia even though that's where Google gets the information from. Imagine a future where Wikipedia finally runs out of money after trying bigger and bigger donation banners and has to stop providing the service. As users expect to see the sidebar in Google's search results pages Google would hoover up…
Google, as well as many other companies, has long relied on Wikipedia for its content. Now, Google and Google.org are giving back.
Google.org President Jacquelline Fuller today announced a $2 million contribution to the Wikimedia Endowment. An additional $1.1 million donation went to the Wikimedia Foundation, courtesy of a campaign where Google employees decided where to direct Google’s donation dollars.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-milli...