579,190,316 Pageviews

of COVID-19 articles from around the world over time

:

Views of Wikipedia articles about COVID-19 often reflect major developments in the timeline of the pandemic. For example, on March 12, 2020, the day after the World Health Organization (WHO) classified COVID-19 as a pandemic, the main English Wikipedia article about the pandemic had over 1.4 million views alone, an increase of 73 percent from the day before the WHO’s announcement.[3]

Data from December 1, 2019 - December 8, 2020. Line chart data from December 1, 2019 - October 12, 2020.

In depth

A look at the main "COVID-19 pandemic" English article

185 Wikipedia entries redirect to this article

Languages

This article is available in 141 languages

Total Pageviews

This article has been viewed 82,732,008 times

Daily Pageviews

On average, this article has received 241,201 pageviews every day since January 1, 2020

Data from January 1, 2020 - December 8, 2020

COVID-19 content by language

Every Wikipedia language edition is unique

Wikipedia articles about COVID-19 exist in over 170 languages, serving as a source of reliable information for people around the world.

 

Here, you can see the 15 language editions of Wikipedia with the most pageviews[4], ranging from English Wikipedia, with over 333 million views, to two and a half million views on Dutch Wikipedia. You can compare these pageviews with the number of editors who are contributing to a given language edition and how many articles they’ve created. When viewed together, these variables show the intersection of audience interest (pageviews), content accessibility (articles), and volunteer capacity (editors). Interesting insights emerge.

 

For example, the 63 COVID-19 articles on Japanese Wikipedia have garnered over 12 million views, suggesting there’s a high level of interest among Japanese-readers compared to the lower number of COVID-19 articles on the Japanese Wikipedia. And, although Wikipedia is currently blocked in China, the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia shows high numbers across all three categories: editors who want to share their knowledge on COVID-19, content volume, and interest from Chinese-readers.

Data from December 1, 2019 - October 12, 2020

← You can filter the view here.

Use this data

Data from Wikimedia projects are open to anyone and are already being used by entities such as Google, Mozilla, and governments to share information about the pandemic. Please contact us at partnerships@wikimedia.org if you need support using our data or would like to collaborate.

 

Learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation’s response to COVID-19.

References

[1] Strongly-related Wikipedia articles include all COVID-19 related pages except for the human-related ones (e.g. Tom Hanks). See the methodology for culling this list of articles here. There are 6,950 strongly-related COVID-19 Wikipedia articles as of December 8, 2020.

 

[2] This statistic reflects the sum of both registered and unregistered Wikipedia editors.

 

[3] The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. On March 10, 2020, the main English pandemic article had 810,573 views, compared to 1,403,079 views on March 12, 2020 (see data here).

 

[4] These data reflect total pageviews, which could include inflated views from bots. Learn more about pageviews from bots.

 

*Sources: New York Times; Axios; United Nations; The Wall Street Journal; World Health Organization

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