Gautama Buddha

About Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha, the historical figure ranked second in global cultural impact by MIT's Pantheon project, was a philosopher and spiritual teacher whose teachings formed the foundation of Buddhism. Born around the 6th century BCE, his life and subsequent enlightenment profoundly shaped religious and philosophical thought across Asia and subsequently the world, making his historical importance virtually unparalleled.

Despite this monumental influence, his modern digital footprint appears relatively small when benchmarked against his HPI rank. In 2025, his Wikipedia pages received an annualized total of 411K views. This level of attention is dwarfed by many less historically significant figures; for instance, it is less than half the traffic seen by Francis Bacon (#101 importance, 833K views) and significantly less than even Caracalla (#319 importance, 1.3M views). This represents a substantial **-5x attention gap**, indicating the internet is currently paying significantly less attention to him relative to his historical weight.

Interestingly, while the overall 2025 viewership is down -7.3% year-over-year, the figure showed considerable *momentum* in the first three quarters, with a +29% increase comparing Q1 to Q3 engagement.