Many web users begin their journey at Wikipedia. They may arrive at Wikipedia from different sources, but it is interesting to watch where they go to after they are at Wikipedia. So what happens to them after their brief stay on the site? Being the 13th highest website for visits, Wikipedia basically accounts for one of every two hundred visits by Internet users. Because of the high number of travelers that come to the site, we should know where they are headed after that.

Over half of the visitors to Wikipedia in the past week arrived there from Google. In a distant second place, Yahoo users came in at 12 percent. It was then shown that after the brief visit to Wikipedia, 10% of web users went back to Google, while 3% migrated to Myspace, and another 1% ended up at a movie database. The compiled information shows that web users often end back up at Google. This could be to further their searches, or to go back to their original searches. Whatever the case may be, it is good to note that it is a relevant path that web users are following.

If you are wondering why these are important trends to watch, the following figures will show you the 20 top downstream sites from the past week:

Ranking Website Downstream %
Number One Ranking Google 9.81%
Number Two Ranking MySpace 3.16%
Number Three Ranking Internet Movie Database 2.44%
Number Four Ranking YouTube 2.42%
Number Five Ranking Yahoo 2.39%
Number Six Ranking Yahoo Mail 1.89%
Number Seven Ranking Yahoo Search 1.83%
Number Eight Ranking Google Images Search 1.32%
Number Nine Ranking Windows Live Mail 1.12%
Number Ten Ranking Amazon .95%
Number Eleven Ranking eBay .95%
Number Twelve Ranking Facebook .88%
Number Thirteen Ranking Ask.com .84%
Number Fourteen Ranking Wiktionary .74%
Number Fifteen Ranking MSN .69%
Number Sixteen Ranking Dictionary.com .45%
Number Seventeen Ranking Gmail .39%
Number Eighteen Ranking Yahoo Images Search .39%
Number Nineteen Ranking Game FAQ .35%
Number Twenty Ranking Wikimedia Commons .33%

Another interesting result is shown below from lowest hit websites to highest hit websites. This is showing different categories of websites that users go to after Wikipedia:

Government 4-5%
Sports 4-5%
Music 5-6%
Business & Finance 6-7%
Lifestyle 7-8%
News and Media 8-9%
Shopping and Classifieds 8-9%
Education 10%
Entertainment 20%
Computers and Internet 35%

These results show some interesting trends in the definition of leaders in specific categories. Some categories show that there are clear industry leaders while others show no significant leaders. It is useful information for web owners to use when finding and using targeted keywords and searching. It is always an important step for web owners to be aware of where web users are going after they stop by Wikipedia to get their initial information.

As a web owner, you should be aware of how web users are spending their time after going to Wikipedia so that you can design a way to target appropriate traffic to your site.