On 10/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I think most people use google to search anyway.
This is amazingly unlikely.
In the log sample I have access:
Out of 106,813 accesses to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ loads of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search? account for 9674 of them.
Page loads with a http://(www.)?google.*/ referer account for 12726 page loads. (yes, the claims by spammers that 75% of Wikipedia page views are from google are BS :) )
Of the 12726 google referers, 442 include the word "wikipedia" in the google URL.
It's possible that the Wikipedia search numbers are pumped by broken bots or the like, but the gap is so big.
As such we should accept the theory that the overwhelming majority people searching Wikipedia use our own search.