Wikipedia traffic surged during black out

London, Jan 22 (ANI): Wikipedia enjoyed a surge in web traffic this week despite being completely blacked out for 24-hours in protest against proposals for an Internet piracy crackdown in the United States.

British visitors to the website during the blackout on Wednesday rose from an average of 5.6 million to 5.8 million, according to independent figures.

Experian Hitwise, a firm that measures web traffic, said that the extra traffic made Wikipedia the eighth most popular website instead of the usual ninth, The Telegraph reports.

Anyone who tried to access the English version of Wikipedia on Wednesday was greeted with a dark page urging them to "imagine a world without free knowledge".

The protest aimed to highlight Wikipedia's opposition to laws under consideration by the US that would make it easier for copyright holders to block access to pirate websites.

Along with technology giants such as Google, Wikipedia says the laws, Sopa and Pipa, would damage free expression.

According to the report, as the high-profile stunt increased Wikipedia's traffic, other sites also benefited from the millions of web users unable to access its database of 3.8 million articles. (ANI)