Wikipedia Reports Traffic Decline as A.I. Changes How Users Seek Information

""These changes are not unexpected," said Marshall Miller, senior director of product at the Wikimedia Foundation, in a recent blog post. "Search engines are increasingly using generative A.I. to provide answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours." Wikipedia first noticed the decline after, ironically, observing an unusually high amount of seemingly human visitors this spring. The platform later discovered that the uptick was due to a surge in bots designed to evade detection."

"A subsequent revamp of its bot detection systems revealed that real human traffic over the past few months had fallen roughy 8 percent compared with the same time period in 2024. "We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative A. I. and social media on how people seek information," said Miller. One of the forces at play is Google's AI Overviews feature, which was introducted last year to provide A.I.-generated summaries above search results, drawing information across the web."

"According to a Pew Research Center report, the share of users likely to click on traditional search result links is halved when a Google AI Overview summary appears. Of 900 surveyed U.S. adults, only 1 percent clicked on a link within an AI Overview summary itself. Google, however, maintains that its A.I. integration has done little to reduce overall click volume to linked websites."

Wikipedia experienced an approximately 8 percent decline in human visitors this year after detecting an unusually high number of seemingly human visits that were later linked to bots designed to evade detection. A revamp of bot detection systems revealed the drop in real human traffic. Generative A.I. and social media are changing information-seeking behavior as search engines increasingly provide direct A.I.-generated answers. Google's AI Overviews place summaries above results and halve the share of users likely to click traditional links, with only 1 percent of surveyed adults clicking links inside AI Overviews. Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit remain dominant sources.

Read at Observer