Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites globally, says it has experienced traffic declines due primarily to summaries generated by artificial intelligence and social media. The situation of the online encyclopedia, considered by many a redoubt in an internet increasingly full of synthetic content, is understood as a reflection of digital consumption trends.

This was explained by Marshal Miller, Senior Product Director at Wikimedia Foundation, through a post on Diff, a blog for the Wikipedia community. In it he assesses the significant impact that bots and crawlers have on Wikipedia traffic data and other Wikimedia projects.

The organization claims to have a system of algorithms capable of classifying traffic based on whether it comes from human users or bots. This way, you can implement limitations on how third-party bots extract data to power commercial search and AI experiences.

From Wikipedia they point out that the bots that crawl the content have become sophisticated and try to appear human, which has led Wikimedia to update its classification systems. Thus, by analyzing traffic data from March to August 2025, it has discovered that much of the unusually high traffic in the May and June period comes from bots designed to evade detection.

Consequently, he says he has observed decreases in page views by human users on Wikipedia in recent months. Specifically, Miller estimates the decline at -8% compared to the same months in 2024 and points as the cause to the impact of generative AI and social networks on how people search for information, especially summaries generated by artificial intelligence, often, he says, based on Wikipedia content.

“These declines are not unexpecteds,” explains Miller. “Search engines are increasingly using generative AI to provide answers directly to searchers, rather than linking to sites like ours. And younger generations seek information on social video platforms rather than the open web“.

Wikimedia is aware that these changes not only affect their websites but also those of publishers and content platforms around the world. However, this approach contradicts the one presented by Google at the beginning of this month of October, when it deployed the AI ​​Mode of its search engine to new markets.

The technology company noted that since launching AI Overview – the artificial intelligence-generated summary that appears at the top of Google search results – it has observed that users visit a greater diversity of websites in search of answers to more complex questions.

Despite lower traffic, Wikipedia maintains that it remains one of “the most valuable data sets on which new knowledge dissemination formats dependFrom Wikimedia they assure that almost all large linguistic models (LLM) are trained with Wikipedia data sets, and search engines and social media platforms prioritize their information to answer their users’ questions.

Although Wikimedia claims to host “with satisfaction“The new ways in which people acquire knowledge and information, urge search engines, AI models, chatbots and social platforms to encourage access to Wikipedia”so that the free knowledge that so many people and platforms depend on can continue to flow sustainably”.

“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers will be able to develop and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors will be able to support this work. Wikipedia is the only website of its scale with verifiability, neutrality and transparency standards that powers information on the Internet, and remains essential to people’s daily information needs.” Miller argues. “For people to trust information shared online, platforms must clarify where the information comes from and increase opportunities to visit and engage with those sources.”.

Additionally, Wikipedia is taking its own measures to stay relevant. Among other things, it is implementing policies, developing an attribution framework, and developing new technical capabilities to ensure that Wikipedia content is responsibly accessed and reused by third parties at scale. It is also experimenting with new ways to bring free Wikipedia knowledge to younger audiences who spend time on other platforms.