Wikipedia has recorded an 8% year-over-year decline in human pageviews, a trend attributed to the rise of generative AI and social media as primary information sources.
Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation revealed in a blog post that improved bot detection revealed that much of the traffic spike seen between May and June came from bots designed to evade detection.
Miller linked the decline to search engines offering AI-generated answers directly, reducing referral traffic to Wikipedia, and to younger users increasingly turning to social video platforms for information.
While Wikipedia remains a critical knowledge source—its content is still widely used by AI systems—the decline raises concerns over volunteer engagement and donations.
Miller urged AI, search, and social media companies to direct more users back to Wikipedia and encouraged readers to support “trusted, human-curated knowledge.”
