Mobile Wikipedia Surges Past Two Billion Monthly Page Views

Wikipedia has been very focused on mobile growth lately and it's a small wonder why, a lot more people have smartphones and tablets compared to a few years ago. What's more, you're as likely if not likelier to need to check something on Wikipedia while you're on the go, or in bed as the case may be.

Wikipedia knows this and has been putting a lot of effort into the mobile website and the mobile apps. Partly because of the better tools, partly because more people use mobile devices, traffic to the mobile versions of Wikipedia has skyrocketed.

"One of the annual plan targets of the Wikimedia Foundation for 2011-2012 was to reach 2 billion monthly page views to the Wikipedia mobile site by June 2012," Wikipedia wrote.

"We’re happy to say that we hit the mark sooner, on the second-to-last day of April to be exact. April clocked in at 2.089 billion, a year-over-year increase of 187%. The mobile site now attracts 12.6% of all page views for Wikipedia, more than twice of its 5.1% share in April 2011," it added.

The fact that mobile usage is growing is hardly surprising, for the obvious reason stated above, the interesting part is that Wikipedia is facing the challenge and was quick to act. The mobile site has become quite good, minimalistic - which is a very good thing for a site like Wikipedia, but very functional, taking advantage of the specifics of touch devices with things like full-screen search suggestions.

Also as expected, the growth is international as more and more people around the world get access to smartphones. Whereas, in 2011, 67 percent of mobile visits were to the English Wikipedia, the number is now at 54 percent and dropping.

Several international Wikipedias have seen huge growth, in some obvious places like Brazil, as the Portugese Wikipedia grew from 3.9 million users to 27.4 million, or Turkey where the local site grew from 1 million users to 9 million. Traffic to the mobile version of the Arabic Wikipedia grew from 1.7 million to 10.2 million.