Internet and Web Usage Statistics
This was great post that I found on the archives for the CHI-WEB list. I wanted to make sure that I kept this close at hand, so I'm providing a copy of it here, though it's also available in it's original, unaltered form in the archive.
Subj:
Internet Usage Stats - Collated Summary
Date:
Wed, 2 Feb 2000 16:57:39 -0000
From:
Robert Utley <robert.utley@PA.PRESS.NET>
To:
CHI-WEB@ACM.ORG
Thanks to all those who mailed with suggested replacements to the now subscription-only StatMarket site. Below are a brief 'portals' list and then a fuller statistics sites list.
I have compiled the stat sites list below in "star" order - I should say that the starrings are assigned by the subjective criteria of how near a replacement to the StatMarket service of up-to-date, at-a-glance usage statistics covering browsers, system os's, plug-ins, monitor resolutions etc. the site is *and* of how reliable the methodology appears to be. In *all* cases, of course, the stats presented are at best dubious. As one site advises:
"Statistics can mislead: different sites attract different visitors; different surveys use different methodologies. Statistics like these, therefore, should only be used as very rough predictors. " (Chuck Upsdell, Browser News)
Portals:
InfoQuest! Internet Surveys and Statistics
http://www.teleport.com/~tbchad/stats1.htmlLarge list of internet survey and statistics sites with description of contents, including some of those mentioned in this mail but also many others. Doesn't give analysis of reliability (but then neither do I)
GVU
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/others/Smaller list with more brief descriptions, some overlap with InfoQuest and with this mail.
Statistics Sites:
WebSnapShot *****
http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/Closest to StatMarket - covers similar ground with similar methodology ("millions of visitors to tens of thousands of web sites"), gives graphical presentations of results, even has Stat of The Week.
e.g. "Finding Methods: current statistics for the most popular ways in which web sites are accessed:
Bookmarked 37% Links 33% Internal 23% Search Engines 4% Other 0% EchoEcho *****
http://www.echoecho.com/At-a-glance stats, covers very similar ground to StatMarket, albeit without the graphical presentation and interactivity. Derived "more than 30 million visitors a day to +125,000 sites", updating bi-weekly, with the same (WebSideStory) software as StatMarket.
e.g.:
SCREENS 56% 800x600 26% 1024x768 12% 640x480 02% 1280x1024 All this *and* useful-looking tutorials, tools and documentation for the web-site builder.
Browser News *****
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/Fine, fast, sceptical presentation of browser-oriented stats resource reporting from multiple sources.
(e.g. "Browser Stats This Week:
The Counter - IE5 45%, IE4 31%, NN4 19%, IE3 1.5% ...
Web Snapshot - IE5 54%, IE4 22%, NN4 11%, NN3 1.6% ...")Nua Internet Surveys ***
http://www.nua.ieTrends material covers broad range of areas with useful reports, nicely categorised. News lead, of course, but archives searchable.
(e.g. "Although Internet users frequently complain about receiving unsolicited email advertisements, 14 percent of consumers in an Ernst & Young survey said they will actually go to a site listed in a spam email. While it is not clear whether it is out of anger or interest, users click on email advertisements 3 to 10 times more often than they click on banners. " )Also has graphical presentation of latest trends a la StatMarket (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/graphs_charts/index.html) which are authoritative but not topical (e.g. latest browser statistics are for 1998)
Also has demographic information
The Counter **
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/Website Counter software firm giving monthly "global statistics" in the StatMarket areas. I couldn't find the source or methodology of these figures from the site (nor contact to ask) hence lack of *'s.
e.g.
Javascript 1.2+: 384934789 (77%)
Javascript <1.2: 16027347 (3%)
Javascript false: 96648812 (19%)NetFolder **
http://www.netfolder.com/XML/Browsers.htm"Poll of polls" graph of browser use compiled from free stats sites and a paid stat service for Feb 99 through to Dec 99. Don't know if this will be updated subsequently.
Cyber Atlas **
http://cyberatlas.internet.comTrends news covering similar ground to Nua altho' with less refined categorisation and less humility as to the accuracy of the numbers given. (Found site to be very slow also - although may have caught it on a bad day)
(e.g. "Nearly 5 million African-American adults are online in the US, according to Cyber Dialogue, and research shows they are intensive music shoppers and seekers of online entertainment.")ClickZ.com "eStatsmaster" *
http://gt.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/em/es/index.html?article=1268Marketing-focussed weekly column wherein the "Statmaster" sifts through the weekly stats and "serves up in his easily digestible piece."
e.g. "IDC sees strong growth in internet services in Latin America in the coming years. From a modest $1.1 billion in 1998, followed by a 22% increase last year, services will generate $8.1 billion in revenue in 2004"Inktomi *
http://www.inktomi.com/webmap/Presents selected statistics from their Web crawling operations
e.g.:
Percentage of documents in English: 86.55%
Percentage of documents in French: 2.36%
Percentage of documents in Dutch: 0.54%Web server market share:
Apache 60.33%
Microsoft-IIS 25.26%
Netscape-Enterprise 3.79%
Rapidsite 2.07%
I edited this down from it's orginal length, droping the last few ineffective sites, but I didn't do much as far as altering the original write up.
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