Wikipedia knows what you searched for most last year.
English Wikipedia raked in more than 84 billion views this year, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the free, publicly edited online encyclopedia. And the most popular article was about ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that’s seemingly everywhere today.
Since its launch just over a year ago, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has skyrocketed into the public’s consciousness as the technology enters schools, health care, law and even religious sermons. The chatbot has also contributed to growing debates about the promise and potential dangers of generative AI, much of which is documented on its Wikipedia page.
The second most-read article on Wikipedia in 2023 was the annual list of deaths, which sees high traffic year after year – taking the #4 and #1 spots in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Individual entries for notable figures who passed away also garnered significant interest this year, including pages for Matthew Perry and Lisa Marie Presley.
Meanwhile, the highly anticipated 2023 Cricket World Cup took third place – alongside three other cricket-related entries in Wikipedia’s Top 25 articles this year, including the Indian Premier League at #4, marking the first time a cricket article has made the list since the Wikimedia Foundation started tracking in 2015.
“Barbenheimer,” Taylor Swift and more also appeared to sway our 2023 internet-reading habits. Here are this year’s Top 25 articles on English Wikipedia.
1. ChatGPT: 49,490,406 page views
2. Deaths in 2023: 42,666,860 page views
3. 2023 Cricket World Cup: 38,171,653 page views
4. Indian Premier League: 32,012,810 page views
5. "Oppenheimer": 28,348,248 page views
6. Cricket World Cup: 25,961,417 page views
7. J. Robert Oppenheimer: 25,672,469 page views
8. “Jawan”: 21,791,126 page views
9. 2023 Indian Premier League: 20,694,974 page views
10. “Pathaan”: 19,932,509 page views
11. “The Last of Us”: 19,791,789 page views
12. Taylor Swift, 19,418,385: page views
13. “Barbie”: 18,051,077 page views
14. Cristiano Ronaldo: 17,492,537 page views
15. Lionel Messi: 16,623,630 page views
16. Premier League: 16,604,669 page views
17. Matthew Perry: 16,454,666 page views
18. United States: 16,240,461 page views
19. Elon Musk: 14,370,395 page views
20. “Avatar: The Way of Water”: 14,303,116 page views
21. India: 13,850,178 page views
22. Lisa Marie Presley: 13,764,007 page views
23. "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3": 13,392,917 page views
24. Russian invasion of Ukraine: 12,798,866 page views
25. Andrew Tate: 12,728,616 page views
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, this Top 25 list was created using English Wikipedia data as of Nov. 28. Numbers for the entire year are set to be updated by the nonprofit on Jan. 3, 2024.
