[Wikipedia-l] The fall of thefreedictionary? and other Alexa topics

Sat Jan 1 14:56:46 UTC 2005

A few months ago, I wrote on my user page  about how 
thefreedictionary.com was set to overtake wikipedia.org as the 
most-visited (according to Alexa) of the sites providing 
Wikipedia-created content.

(Go to 
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=http://www.wikipedia.org#top 

and then type thefreedictionary.com into the compare box to see how 
close they came to overtaking us at the end of October, when I wrote my 
note).

GOOD NEWS: Over the last two months, thefreedictionary.com has lost 
massive amounts of ground to us.

I suspect a lot of this is to do with Google. Thefreedictionary.com 
really worked the Google algorithm well for a long time, returning way 
ahead of Wikipedia and mirrors time after time in searches. I suspect 
that the algorithm has changed to Wikipedia's advantage - we are picking 
up more readers than ever - this should make sure we continue to pick up 
contributors, thus improving the resource even more quickly.

Pete/Pcb21

PS. Wikipedia.org is now listed in the top 100 English language websites 
by Alexa - a newish entry at number 98. (Yes this is a bit of a swizz, 
because only 61% of page views are on wikipedia.org are of English 
pages, but hey it is cool anyway!)

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=en