This website receives an average of 800 to 1,000 article reads a day. On days when I have a particularly interesting story, such as the Stefan de Rothschild Huffington Post hoax, it jumps to near 10,000 hits; whereas during periods of inactivity and neglect, it plummets to around 250.
Where does the traffic come from? The answer is: not Wikipedia.
From the lead photo on Madonna’s article to that on the Dead Sea, my photography illustrates over 4,000 subjects on the English Wikipedia alone (far higher if you count all global Wikimedia projects). On each of those photos are links back to this website.
And while Wikipedia is one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world, the reality is that it provides very little traffic to here.
I’ve run this blog since 2008 and I’ve long known that Wikipedia’s ability to drive traffic is relatively limited, at least when it comes to the author links on imagery. In fact, the Google Analytics for my website tell me that Wikipedia is responsible for only 7% of all my traffic, despite having some very high profile photographs on the site.
As an illustration, yesterday, February 14, my photograph of Salman Rushdie was featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia for their “On this day…” factoid box:
1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.
Wikipedia’s home page is one of the most viewed Internet pages in the history of the Internet; yesterday it received 4.4M hits. Placement on this page immediately brings a wealth of visitors to the subject articles presented. Whereas Salman Rushdie’s Wikipedia biography typically receives 2.5K hits on an average day, Rushdie’s biography yesterday skyrocketed six times that number to 16.3K hits.
What about my portrait of Rushdie that also made its way on to this highly visible piece of web property? The photo on the article is hit–as in a person clicks on the image itself to make it larger–an average of 25 times a day on English Wikipedia. On February 14, the cropped version on Wikipedia’s home page caused that number to jump to 7,000.
How many of those 7,000 hits then went to explore the author of the photograph’s website? Two (2).
The lesson is that if, like me, you are an artist who cares more about having his work seen, there are few better public places than Wikipedia as long as you are willing to be loose with the copyright. But if you are reading Chris Silver Smith’s blog post about the “powerful” effect of traffic to your website via Wikipedia photography, I can attest that I have seen very little of such an effect.
In contrast, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writing two short blog posts–Stefan de Rothschild and Susan Sarandon doesn’t know what Wikipedia is–brought tens of thousands of hits. Sullivan drives more traffic than Wikipedia.
Wikipedia photos to be deleted
NYC Wedding March – September 26, 2010
Joaquin Phoenix is a poser
Flushing Meadow Corona Park skate park
East Village Park and Williamsburg Bridge photos
100 People I Photographed for the Creative Commons
Pakistan flood devastation statistics
Cordoba House / Ground Zero mosque protest photos
The void in my blogging (and some photos)
Rihanna video with Eminem about Chris Brown?
Twitter: lena_fm
says:
Wow David, this is a really interesting insight. I would not have thought that the numbers would be two out of seven thousand. Wow.
Chris Silver Smith says in his blog, “If you’re setting up your User page in part to promote your business, I suggest that you consider naming it beneficially with your business name…”
And what a quick way to get your User account banned on Wikipedia!
I really need to finish up my e-book, entitled “Your Business and Wikipedia”. Coming soon, David!
And now, Wikipedia Review has boosted your site traffic by far more than Wikipedia managed. Life’s a funny thing when you think about it.
(Seriously – I agree with your point that while Wikipedia’s great at driving internal traffic, it’s very poor at sending traffic elsewhere. However, this probably isn’t the best example to use. It’s a generic headshot; there’s nothing about it that would make me think “wow, I want to find out more about this photographer”.)
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
I think it’s a perfect example – using a photograph that was on the homepage recently, combined with my pointing out that with thousands of articles illustrated, Wikipedia referral traffic is only 7% of my blog’s total; I thought that it all combined to make the point nicely.
Think we’re talking at cross purposes. What I’m trying (badly) to say (it’s the middle of the night here) is that were it a particularly striking subject, or a particularly good photo (or a particularly bad one, come to that), you’d likely see a lot more traffic from people wanting to know about who took it. This particular photo is so “standard”, people probably just vaguely assume it’s a stock photo if they care at all. If it were something that grabbed peoples’ attention – not necessarily one of Those Photos, but something like your Milagros Schmoll or even one of the chihuahua pictures – I imagine a lot more people would be curious as to who took it.
(Bear in mind as well, that you aren’t the best example to use in general. A lot of the type of people who have in interest in who took a particular photo on Wikipedia, are Wikipedia regulars who already know who you are. It would be interesting to see how the click-through rate to the Flickr page of the uploader of File:Ganoga Sunset.jpg, currently on the main page, compares.)
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
You may have a point, although Rushdie remains something of a flashpoint figure since the fatwa has never been rescinded. Even for a standard photo, I found 2 click-throughs out of 7,000 views to be remarkably low, but fits overall with the observation that I don’t see a lot of run-off as Chris Silver Smith seems to think in his advice.
And what Greg said above.
I do get a lot of click-throughs when somebody dies; that’s usually how I discover an image subject has passed away. Or if they are arrested in an on-line child sex sting.
Twitter: studwithswag
says:
Interesting post mainly because whenever I read a wikipedia article and view the corresponding photo, I rarely click the photo to take me to the website that originally took the picture unless it’s completely out of the ordinary or unique. One complaint about wikipedia I hear from many bloggers and web administrators is their rejection of link sharing. You boost their rank, yours stays the same. It was my understanding that wikipedia is notorious for not driving traffic to people’s websites, purposely.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Knowledge, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Commons, allow the authors of media, such as my photographs, to include links to their websites; whereas blogs in general don’t belong on the site since they aren’t reliable sources for an encyclopedia (this one included).
I’m not complaining about the lack of traffic, but making public an observation in reference to Chris Smith’s blog post.
It might be a fun experiment for you to take some photographs around Chicago and upload them to Wikimedia Commons (which feeds Wikipedia), and as the author you can link back to your site.
Twitter: studwithswag
says:
David, Thank you for responding and clarifying quite a few things. Can we have a moment of silence so I can recover from my “D’oh!” moment? You’re such a learning tool.
I’m unsure why I didn’t consider how viable a resource Wikipedia Commons is for just about all of the reasons you listed above and more.
I appreciate the suggestion about experimenting with photographs around Chicago. It’s a great idea. One that I intend to play around with.
I found your site because of one of your photos on WikiCommons, and followed the link. Low stats perhaps, but I feel pretty special! (Great stuff here, by the way.)
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Thanks for the note, Ben.
First of all I’d like to say, this is a really informative post! I’ve got a big question bothering me, I really like the theme of your website and tried to install the same theme on my Worpdress website. However, there is some kind of strange php error in the sidebar. Do you have any hints, what settings are you using? Please PM me on Twitter @HealthyLivin or via e-mail.
brilliant piece of writing here at http://blog.shankbone.org/2010/02/15/how-much-traffic-does-wikipedia-send-my-website/ . Thiking to translating your copy into korean for our visitors. Will let you know after I talk to our writers. Thanks.
Twitter: mrstardom
says:
I would have thought that because Wikipedia is the web’s most popular information source, it would at least send substantial amounts of traffic to websites that are linking to its articles. This is ironic!