Wikipedia Usage Among American Adults.pdf

36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia, particularly popular with the well-educated and current college-age students. On a typical day in 2007, 8% of online Americans consulted Wikipedia. A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey found that 36% of adult internet users consult Wikipedia, with 50% of those with at least a college degree and 46% of current full- or part-time students using the site.

Wikipedia is more popular among the well-educated, with 50% of those with at least a college degree consulting the site, compared to 22% of those with a high school diploma. Young adults and broadband users are also early adopters of Wikipedia, with 44% of those ages 18-29 using the site and 42% of home broadband users looking for information on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is one of the most heavily visited sites on the internet, with comScore Media Metrix and Hitwise consistently registering it in the top 10 global sites. In the cluster of sites focused on educational and reference material, Wikipedia is the most popular site, drawing nearly six times more traffic than the next-closest site.

Hitwise data suggest several reasons for Wikipedia's popularity, including the sheer amount of material on the site, the ability of authors to create and edit entries at any time, and the site's dramatic growth correlated with Americans' affection for search engines. Wikipedia's article structure, which includes links to other Wikipedia articles and external material, also helps explain its popularity, as it gives Wikipedia material a shot at high Google rankings on many keyword queries.

Convenience is likely a big factor in Wikipedia's popularity, as research by the Pew Internet Project has shown that the convenience of using sites makes a difference in driving online behavior. The ease of using the internet to find information quickly seems to be a constant for many kinds of data hunts online.