Record Days

220 English Wikipedia pages, each on the single biggest traffic day it has ever had. Those days drew between 1.4 and 15.0 million views, between 2015 and 2026.

How many days each page's traffic stayed high after its record day

Day 340

179 pages back to normal · 35 never returned

middle value 28 daysFIFA World Cup1 dayWrestleMania 332 days88th Academy Awards3 daysKamala Harris5 daysTom Brady7 daysAlexander Hamilton254 daysKelly Preston330 daysChristian Eriksen330 daysJerry Springer340 daysChadwick Bosemannever35 pages never returned to normal. 32 of those were tracked for a full year03090180270340days since the record day
Each bar is one page, sorted shortest to longest. It runs from the record day to the day the page's traffic fell back under twice its normal level and stayed there for a week. A bar's colour repeats its length, so the axis is also the key. Drag the marker along the axis to move through the days.

How much traffic each page had the day before its record day

Half of the pages had under 64,635 views the day before. 10 had under 1,000. Pope Leo XIV's page had 5.

101001K10K100K1M10MViews on the record dayViews the day beforemiddle value 64,635Pope Leo XIV5 views the day beforeKamala Harris3,501,236 the day beforeCharlie Kirk14,954,133 views on the day
Each line is one page, from its views the day before (bottom) up to its views on the record day (top). Each step along the scale is ten times the last.

Where each page's traffic settled 300 to 340 days after its record day

196 of the 220 pages can be measured this far out. 86 were still getting more traffic than before their record day. 110 were getting less.

0.01×0.1×1×10×100×110 pagesless traffic than before86 pagesmore traffic than beforeUnited States Electoral College0.033× its normal levelTasuku Honjo508× its normal level
Each square is one page, placed by its daily traffic 300 to 340 days after the record day as a multiple of its normal level before it. Hollow squares are pages renamed during that year, so the old title stopped receiving traffic.

Which day of the week the record days landed on

Monday holds 52 of the 220 record days. Spread evenly, each weekday would hold about 31. Tuesday holds 19.

30Sun52Mon19Tue31Wed33Thu29Fri26Sat31 if spread evenly
Dates are UTC, as the source reports them.

When each record day happened

47 of the 220 record days share their date with another page on this list, on 19 dates. Select a dot to see that page's own traffic.

201620172018201920202021202220232024202520261.5M2M3M5M10M15Mviews that dayCharlie Kirk15M
Each dot is one page, placed by the date of its record day and the views it drew that day. A ring groups pages whose record day is the same date.

Charlie Kirk

Record day 10 Sep 202514,954,133 views that day9,624 the day beforeBack to normal on day 134

10K100K1M10M-7record day153045607590normal level 12,445 a day14,954,133 viewsback to normal on day 134

All 220 pages, sorted by how long their traffic stayed high

The number after each name is the days until its traffic was back to normal.

1 day28 days340 days

never still above twice normal a full year later, 32 pagesnot yet record day too recent to tell, 3 pagesunmeasured no normal level in the month before, 6 pages

How this is measured

The pages. Every English Wikipedia article's single biggest day in the daily top 1,000, 2015-07-01 to 2026-08-13, ranked by views. The 220 kept are the largest that also rose and then fell within a week, so bigger single days exist that this rule excluded. This is each page's own biggest day, not a list of the biggest days on Wikipedia.

Normal level. The median of a page's daily views from 30 to 22 days before its record day. One definition, used in every section. 6 pages have no such level because their traffic was already high all month, and they are left out of the first chart.

Back to normal. The first day a page's traffic is under twice its normal level and stays there for seven days. 32 pages were tracked for a full year and never got there. 3 have a record day too recent for the file to say.

Scheduled events. A tournament or ceremony runs longer than a month, so the window used for its normal level sits inside the event. The FIFA World Cup, WrestleMania and Academy Awards bars are shorter than they should be for that reason.

Views, not people. The source counts pageviews by users and does not identify readers. One person loading a page ten times counts ten times.

Wikimedia daily pageviews, en.wikipedia, all-access, user agents only. 2015-07-01 to 2026-08-13. Public domain, CC0.

Dustin ColeData