Wikipedia experienced increased traffic on Wednesday, despite of blacking out its English language contents to protest against SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

Zscaler compared Wikipedia’s traffic midday Wednesday with its traffic on Tuesday. While the blackout day only saw somewhat more total transactions, the number of unique visitors was perceptibly increased.

The below charts compare Wikipedia’s unique visitors Jan. 18 (in green) & Jan. 17 (in red) . More people flocked to the Internet database on Wednesday, most probably due to the hype of the blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

Wednesday’s overall transactions per hour only slightly edged ahead of Tuesday’s.

Transactions per visitor were significantly reduced Wednesday, compared to Tuesday.

We can combine the two above graphs into a graph of transactions per unique visitor, and we see that this is much smaller today