Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 3–9, 2013)[edit]

← Last week's report –Next week's Report →

For the week of February 3–9, 2013 the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:

Rank	Last	Weeks	Article	Views	Notes
1	–	–	Mary Leakey	2,723,265	Google celebrated the 100th birthday of the famous British paleoanthropologist with a Google Doodle on February 6, leading to over 2.7 million views, the highest weekly views of any article to date in 2013.
2	–	–	Richard III of England	1,867,853	It was announced this week that the long missing remains of the former King of England, who died in 1485, had been positively identified. Even the article about Shakespeare's play Richard III saw a boost, appearing at #300 on the WP:5000 this week with 124,390 views.)
3	8	5	Ray Lewis	1,744,191	American football linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League, whose team prevailed in Super Bowl XLVII on February 3. Get ready to hear more about the American Super Bowl. Much more.
4	–	–	Colin Kaepernick	1,551,963	American football quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who lost the Super Bowl.
5	–	–	Beyoncé Knowles	935,733	The Super Bowl XLVII half-time performer. As noted in the Signpost article last week, performing at the Super Bowl half-time show is a guarantee of popularity. Beyonce's article peaked at 110–120 views per second!
6	5	3	Super Bowl XLVII	877,696	Played on February 3, if you didn't notice the three entries above this one. Up from 476,406 views last week.
7	–	–	Jim Harbaugh	846,581	Head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, who lost, yes, the Super Bowl.
8	–	–	Chinese New Year	845,799	This most important of the traditional Chinese holidays fell on February 10 this year.
9	–	–	Moonshiners (TV series)	827,581	The American docudrama television series on the Discovery Channel that seeks to portray people who produce (illegal) moonshine in the Appalachian Mountains. Almost 800,000 of these views fell on February 7, coinciding with a new episode, but this spike seems quite large in any event.
10	–	–	Illuminati	803,447	A power outage at the Super Bowl fueled internet speculation that somehow this secret society was to blame. Seriously.
11	–	–	Chris Kyle	776,084	A United States Navy SEAL and sniper, he was shot and killed on February 2.
12	–	–	Super Bowl	716,914	More Super Bowl traffic. Keep reading, this isn't the last of it, either.
13	–	–	John Harbaugh	712,845	Head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, and brother of #7
14	2	5	Facebook	706,371	Up from 609,629 views last week, a perennially favorite article.
15	–	–	Joe Flacco	702,822	American football quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens.
16	–	–	Baltimore Ravens	688,597	This team won that game referenced above.
17	–	–	Valentine's Day	667,470	In anticipation of the annual holiday which falls on February 14.
18	4	5	G-force	595,224	Up from 505,963 views last week. The popularity of this article is a bit mystifying, possibly could be influenced by non-human views. Its popularity increased in June 2012 and has stayed that way.
19	–	–	Destiny's Child	568,418	Performed as part of the Super Bowl halftime show.
20	–	–	List of Super Bowl champions	563,828	Related to the Super Bowl.
21	–	–	House of Cards (U.S. TV series)	534,097	A new political drama series starring Kevin Spacey, all 13 episodes of the first season were released on February 1.
22	3	2	Vishwaroopam	515,618	An Indian Tamil spy thriller film released on January 25, starring Kamal Haasan. Only down slightly from 555,463 views last week, though in a week with many highly popular articles it drops from #3 to #22 on the Top 25.
23	–	–	Michael Oher	485,921	American football player for the Baltimore Ravens, also known for the movie (and book) The Blind Side based on his story.
24	–	–	My Cousin Vinny	456,189	Most of the views for this 1992 American comedy film came on February 4, for unclear reasons.
25	–	–	San Francisco 49ers	430,661	That's 14 of the Top 25 related to the Super Bowl this week (assuming you count the Illuminati, who are probably the cause of it.)

Compared to last week, traffic in the Top 25 articles was very high. Last week's #1, Royal Rumble (2013), would only have been #16 this week.
Almosts: Super Bowl related articles also appear below the Top 25, including List of Super Bowl halftime shows (#28, 382,463 views) and Bar Refaeli (#37, 322,017, who appeared in a "controversial" Super Bowl commercial).
This list is derived from the WP:5000 report. It excludes the Wikipedia main page (and "wiki"), non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). One notable removal this week: Ernst Litfaß (919,854 views), with an unexplained massive spike in views from Feb. 1–8. Litfaß (or Litfass) was the German inventor of Advertising columns. Whether the views are the work of a spambot with a sense of humour is unknown. The German Wikipedia version saw no view spike.
The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create list: [1]