Editing Wikipedia (section)

=== Readership ===
In February 2014, ''The New York Times'' reported that Wikipedia was ranked fifth globally among all websites, stating "With 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month, ... Wikipedia trails just Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, the largest with 1.2 billion unique visitors."<ref name="small screen" /> However, its ranking dropped to 13th globally by June 2020 due mostly to a rise in popularity of Chinese websites for online shopping.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.alexa.com/topsites |title=The top 500 sites on the web |website=Alexa |access-date=June 13, 2020}}</ref>

In addition to [[logistic function|logistic growth]] in the number of its articles,<ref name="modelling" /> Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a general reference website since its inception in 2001.<ref name="comscore" /> About 50 percent of search engine traffic to Wikipedia comes from Google,<ref name="hitwisegoogle" /> a good portion of which is related to academic research.<ref name="hitwiseAcademic" /> The number of readers of Wikipedia worldwide reached 365&nbsp;million at the end of 2009.<ref name="365M">{{cite web |url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/TED2010%2C_Stuart_West_full_presentation_updated_with_January_data.pdf |title = Wikipedia's Evolving Impact: slideshow presentation at TED2010 |first = Stuart |last = West |access-date = October 23, 2015}}</ref> The [[Pew Research Center|Pew]] Internet and American Life project found that one third of US Internet users consulted Wikipedia.<ref name="Wikipedia users" /> In 2011 ''Business Insider'' gave Wikipedia a valuation of $4&nbsp;billion if it ran advertisements.<ref>{{cite web |author = SAI |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/2011-digital-100#7-wikimedia-foundation-wikipedia-7 |title = The World's Most Valuable Startups |website = Business Insider |date = October 7, 2011 |access-date = June 14, 2014}}</ref>

According to "Wikipedia Readership Survey 2011", the average age of Wikipedia readers is 36, with a rough parity between genders. Almost half of Wikipedia readers visit the site more than five times a month, and a similar number of readers specifically look for Wikipedia in search engine results. About 47 percent of Wikipedia readers do not realize that Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Readership_Survey_2011/Results |title = Research: Wikipedia Readership Survey 2011/Results – Meta |publisher = Wikimedia |date = February 6, 2012 |access-date = April 16, 2014}}</ref>

==== COVID-19 pandemic ====
{{main|Wikipedia coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic}}
During the [[COVID-19 pandemic]], Wikipedia's coverage of the pandemic received international media attention, and brought an increase in Wikipedia readership overall.<ref>{{cite news|title=Wikipedia breaks five-year record with high traffic in pandemic|url=https://www.dawn.com/news/1551521|last=Jahangir|first=Ramsha|date=April 23, 2020|website=DAWN.COM|language=en|access-date=May 4, 2020}}</ref>