State of Wikipedia report for September 2025

This month’s Chaos Index sits at 68 for the month of September, up slightly (4%) from the month of August. New page submissions have continued at high rates, leading to a lot of AfC activity; new page declines remain at the extremely high levels we’ve seen since July, and August also saw an uptick in wait times for the first time in a few months.

As Google reportedly prepares to make its AI-powered “AI Mode” the default search experience, everyone is preparing for the ripple effects it will have throughout online reputation management. With AI Mode generating summarized answers directly on the results page, it is both reducing the need for users to click through to original sources, shifting focus away from websites and targeted links, and towards aggregation of information from authoritative sources.

As SEO’s influence changes in zero-click environments, ORM strategies will need to focus more on well-sourced content across trusted platforms. Wikipedia, being a definitive source of verifiable information from reliable, trusted third parties, will continue to play a primary role in the information populating in results from LLMs both big and small – a prescient reminder of how important Wikipedia remains to a holistic online reputation management strategy, especially in a rapidly changing SEO landscape.

NOTE: The Chaos Index is our proprietary metric for measuring turbulence throughout Wikipedia and tracking the community’s current sentiment towards corporate-related pages. The index measures community actions such as editing frequency, content deletion, message board posts, and many other activities that contribute to unstable corporate page environments.