• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 14, 2005

Web traffic to educational reference sites like Wikipedia jumped 22 percent year-over-year, Nielsen//NetRatings reported Thursday. Such sites attracted nearly 46.4 million Web users to reach 31 percent of active Internet users in September 2005. Nielsen attributed the increased enrollment mainly to the triple-digit growth of Wikipedia and Yahoo! Education.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and edited by consumers, ranked as the fastest-growing educational reference site, attracting some 13 million unique Web users last month. The free online tool hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation grew 289 percent in year-over-year growth, according to Nielsen.

Yahoo! Education, the second-fastest-growing educational site in September 2005, drew over 3 million Web users to search the available online reference tools--up 205 percent from last year. Reference tools available for search include: a Spanish and English dictionary, thesaurus, literary quotes, Shakespeare's works, a world fact book, and the Bartleby.com edition of "Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body."

Another educational reference site that experienced notable year-over-year growth was eHow, increasing 97 percent. CollegeBoard.com and City-Data.com completed the top five fastest-growing sites, each garnering 58 percent in year-over-year growth, Nielsen reported.

Gerry Davidson, senior media analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, equated educational reference's rapid growth with the appeal of the Internet in general, calling it free and quick access to information.

"The 'wiki' phenomenon offers the added element of user interaction, which appeals to college-educated Web users' sense of altruism by allowing them to add or correct online content," Davidson explained in a prepared statement.

Nielsen's educational reference category is comprised of nearly 50 sites used to research a wide range of topical facts, including history, geography, anatomy, and language translation. Sites not found in this category included: personal directories, consumer product reviews, news article search tools, and urban legends.

Nielsen also noted that over two-thirds of last month's educational reference Web users--or 69 percent--attended college, while nearly half had received some type of college degree.