Every Wikipedia article has a public view count. Most people don't know it's there, and the ones who find it usually only see the last 30 days.
There are three ways to see page views, depending on how far back you want to look. The last one is a free Google Sheet I made, the Wikipedia Trends Tracker, which charts five years of monthly views for any two articles.
The short answer
On any Wikipedia article, open Tools, then Page information, to see views for the last 30 days. For history, use Wikimedia's free pageviews API, which has daily and monthly views back to July 2015. To chart that history without code, paste the article link into a Google Sheet template that calls the API for you.
Option 1: Page information (last 30 days)
- Open the Wikipedia article.
- Open the Tools menu. On desktop it sits at the top right of the article.
- Click Page information.
- Scroll to Page views in the past 30 days.
Good for a quick "is anyone reading this?" check. Not useful for trends, because 30 days can't tell you whether a topic is growing.
Option 2: Pageviews Analysis (Wikimedia's web tool)
Wikimedia has a web tool at pageviews.wmcloud.org. Type an article name, pick a date range, and it draws a chart. It's free and it's good.
The catch is that it's a web page. You can't keep your comparisons, add notes beside them, share a working version with your team, or build anything on top of the numbers without exporting and re-exporting.
Option 3: Chart five years in Google Sheets
This is the one I use. The data comes from the same Wikimedia API, but it lands in a spreadsheet you own.
- Get the free template from the Trend Tracker page and make a copy.
- Open the COMPARE TWO tab.
- Copy the address of any Wikipedia article from your browser and paste it into URL 1.
- Paste a second article into URL 2 if you want a comparison.
- The chart fills in with five years of monthly views for each.
Because it's a sheet, you can keep a tab of pages you check every month, add your own notes, and share it.
A real example: Semaglutide
Semaglutide is the drug in Ozempic and Wegovy. Its English Wikipedia article is a good example of why 30 days isn't enough.
According to Wikimedia's API (human readers only), the article had about 28,000 views in October 2021. It peaked at about 371,000 in September 2024. By September 2026 it was back to about 39,000 a month.
If you'd only looked at the last 30 days in any one of those months, you'd have a completely different story. The five-year chart shows the whole wave. You can compare it with the second GLP-1 drug on the Semaglutide vs Tirzepatide page.
Tips for reading page views
- Use monthly, not daily. Daily views are noisy. Monthly shows the shape.
- Ignore the current month. It's still being counted, so the last point always looks low.
- Watch for renamed articles. If a line falls to almost zero overnight, the article was probably moved to a new title. Views are recorded under each title separately.
- Use the full article title. "Notion" on Wikipedia is a disambiguation page. The app is "Notion (productivity software)". Copy the address from your browser instead of guessing.
FAQ
Are Wikipedia page views public?
Yes. Every article's views are published by the Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can see them, for any article.
How far back do Wikipedia page views go?
The current pageviews API has data from July 2015. Older statistics exist in a different format, but 2015 onward is what most tools use.
Do page views include bots?
Wikimedia labels known crawlers and automated traffic separately, so you can ask for human readers only. The numbers in this post are human readers.
Can I see page views for another language's Wikipedia?
Yes, the API covers every language edition. The examples here use English Wikipedia.
Want five years of page views without leaving Google Sheets? Get the free Wikipedia Trends Tracker. Paste a link, get the chart.
More on tracking trends
- A free Google Trends alternative with real numbers, on why counts beat a 0 to 100 score.
