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Wikipedia's Viewing Statistics Could Provide Better Web-Trends Data Than Google

Posted by samzenpus on from the cause-it's-hot dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers in Japan have established an almost 75% correlation between Google Trends data on keyword surges and equivalent Wikipedia page views. Since Google provides aggregate web-trends data with little granularity, the 'early ripples' of web interest are far harder to detect via its APIs than by a system that gathers information from Wikipedia's publicy accessible page views data.

2 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Why is this surprising? by PvtVoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Could the data be correlated be because people mostly search for Wikipedia entries using Google? I know that if I'm looking for info on an unfamiliar topic, I search for it on Google, and will usually check the Wikipedia entry if there is one.

    I'm not sure why anybody finds the statistic even slightly remarkable. The only thing that's surprising to me is that it's not higher than 75%.

    1. Re:Why is this surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      True, but that's not the point. It doesn't matter how people get to Wikipedia, what matters is that we can get the trend data faster and in more detail than Google releases.