Cleopatra has suddenly become the most popular page on the English Wikipedia - it's all the fault of Google Assistant, which has attracted more than 50 million users

An article about the famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra suddenly became the most popular page in the English version of Wikipedia in 2022. And the Google Assistant is to blame.

Here's What We Know

Virtual assistant from Google gave a master class to all the experts who teach how to attract visitors to a website. Google Assistant is now installed on about 1 billion devices worldwide. One of the prompts that appears while setting up the assistant is Try saying: Show Cleopatra on Wikipedia. This brought the total number of views of the Cleopatra article to over 55 million.

Views of material about the Egyptian queen began to rise in 2020, but peaked in 2022. Meanwhile, prior to 2020, Cleopatra's story had an average of 2.5 million views each year. But Google Assistant wasn't as popular back then, probably.

Usually the most viewed articles in the English version of Wikipedia are those related to world events. In addition to Cleopatra in 2022, the top texts were about Elon Musk, Johnny Depp, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and, of course, the war in Ukraine.

The year before, people read most about the Squid Game series, the European Football Championship and the death of Prince Philip. The top stories on English Wikipedia in 2020 are basketball player Kobe Bryant, the U.S. presidential election and, of course, COVID-19.

Source: The Conversation