[Wikipedia-l] And now a bit of fun...

Fri Jul 16 05:30:02 UTC 2004

Here's a very unscientific and informal gauge of how great Wikipedia 
has become compared to other encyclopedias: the Google fight 
(www.googlefight.com).  It simply compares Google hits and displays it 
in a rather humorous format.

Wikipedia - 11,200,000

Encyclopedia Britannica - 1,670,000
Encyclopaedia Britannica - 1,420,000
Encyclopædia Britannica - 803

Encyclopedia Americana - 94,700
Encyclopaedia Americana - 11,500
Encyclopædia Americana - 88

Encarta - 5,060,000
Microsoft Encarta - 1,070,000

Funk and Wagnalls - 36,400

Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia - 11,300

Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia - 29,000
Grolier's Encyclopedia - 5,920

The Star Trek Encyclopedia - 108,000

Interesting to note that Wikipedia loses against "World Book" 
(14,800,000) but not "World Book Encyclopedia" (3,130,000).

For comparison, Wikipedia wins against
Internet Explorer - 10,900,000
The Simpsons - 9,900,000 (the Simpson family member with the highest 
score is Lisa Simpson)
iPod - 8,390,000
World Cup - 7,870,000
ESPN - 5,520,000
Warcraft - 3,860,000
Super Bowl - 3,590,000
Slashdot - 3,490,000
National Football League - 2,600,000 (although Wikipedia loses to "NFL" 
- 13,300,000)
Pokemon - 2,470,000 (like "Encyclopædia Britannica", you get less 
results with the correct spelling of "Pokémon")
Street Fighter - 1,900,000 (speaking of which, Marvel beats Capcom, 
which beats SNK)
Starcraft - 1,680,000

Wikipedia tied against SourceForge, and lost embarassingly to football 
(42,700,000), Google (59,600,000) and eBay (65,300,000).

As for Wikipedia's dictionary counterpart, Wiktionary loses a lot of 
its Google fights...

Wiktionary - 331,000

Oxford English Dictionary - 2,090,000
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language - 1,160,000
New Oxford American Dictionary - 796,000
Concise Oxford Dictionary - 182,000

All data based on results on July 15, 2004.