More traffic for the smaller #Wikipedia projects

The biggest Wikipedia in pageviews is the English language Wikipedia. Last month it generated 49.36% of all the traffic. This left 40.34% for the numbers 2 to nine and 10.3% for all the other Wikipedias.

Traffic is growing really well; 19% on a year to year basis for all the Wikipedias and 20% for the English Wikipedia. What the chart to the left shows is that slowly but surely the "other" languages are doing better than the top 10.

The current picture will change as it did in the past. Consider that the Dutch Wikipedia was bigger than the Chinese Wikipedia. The Dutch is growing at 16% while the Chinese is powering up the ladder with a healthy 46%.

There are many languages that have the potential to move on in the traffic rankings. This may be because the content in those languages improves or because the infrastructure in a country changes. I have reliable information that in India mobile traffic went from 55m to 85m in a matter of 6 months and this while it is too soon to attribute this to Wikipedia Zero. This is not obvious from the statistics published for India.

In a way I have been cheating; the numbers in the charts above exclude mobile traffic. This is because these numbers make it more obvious how well the "other" languages are doing. However, as you can see something similar is happening when mobile traffic is included.

With Wikipedia Zero growing in relevance, it seems obvious that content that is relevant to the people who use this service will grow in demand. As this is addressed in the languages people read, it will mean that the growth of popularity of Wikipedia articles will continue for some time. I also expect that the "other" languages will become more relevant and assertive.
Thanks,
     GerardM