Siri Accounts for 25% of Wolfram Alpha Queries

Siri has been met with mixed feelings from consumers since it debuted on the iPhone 4S last Fall. While some folks think the feature alone is worth the handset’s price tag, others find it to be little more than a novelty.

Well in case anyone was wondering how often 4S owners are actually using Siri, the New York Times has the answer. In a recent report, the site notes that 25% of Wolfram Alpha’s queries come from Apple’s digital assistant…

Wolfram Alpha is the “knowledge engine” that Siri goes to for help with answering a number of questions including “What planes are flying overhead.” Its database is made up of over 50 million lines of code, running on more than 10,000 CPUs.

From the NYT article:

“Siri accounts for about a quarter of the queries fielded by Wolfram Alpha, whose staff has grown to 200. Several large companies in health care, financial services and oil and gas recently hired Dr. Wolfram’s private company, Wolfram Research, to do tailored corporate versions of Wolfram Alpha for them. Microsoft also licenses Wolfram Alpha technology.”

Given the amount of traffic it sees on a monthly basis, it’s pretty remarkable that Siri accounts for 25% of all of Wolfram Alpha’s search queries. It really speaks to the popularity of the feature, which a lot of critics consider to be extremely overrated.

Wolfram Alpha was founded in 2009 by Dr. Stephen Wolfram, and has seen substantial growth over the last two years. The search engine is expected to launch a new $4.99 per month Pro service this week, which will sport additional features.

[BGR]