Interesting Web Statistics

Browser Usage and Demographics | Technology Deployment and Conformance | Usability | Other

Browser Usage and Demographics

• How Server Statistics Undercount Text Browsers by Kynn Bartlett (1999)
• The World's Online Populations (08 Feb 2002)
• How big is the internet (24 May 2000)
  • Browsers (World) MicroSoft 75% Netscape 24% Other 1%
  • MSIE4 39% MSIE5 32% NS4 22% MSIE3 3% NS3 3% WebTV 1% NS5 0.3% MSIE2 0.2% MSIE0 0.2% NS2 0.02%
  • Get stats from a variety of places. Didn't try to verify.
• WebSnapshot.com (from 22 January 2001, no longer a free service)
  • Top 20 browsers: IE 5.0 31.7% IE 5.5 31.6% IE 5.01 12.0% IE 5.0 (AOL) 6.6% IE 4.01 5.9% Netscape 4.7 3.2% Netscape 4.75 1.2% Netscape 4.5 1.1% Netscape 4.73 1.0% Netscape 3.01 0.9% Netscape 4.72 0.8% Netscape 4.61 0.7% IE 4.01 (AOL) 0.7% Netscape 4.08 0.5% IE 2.0 0.4% Netscape 4.51 0.4% Netscape 6 0.4% Netscape 4.04 0.3% Netscape 4.74 0.3% Other 0.3%
  • Stats compiled from samples of users to sites that use the SuperStats tracking system (data sources).
• Browser News (20 January 2001)
  • Compares this weeks stats from Web Snapshot, My Website, and The Counter.
  • List of sources of stats.
  • Stats - Trends. Browser Trends, Resolutions Trends, and Colour-depth Trends
• DreamInk: Demographics (based on data published by Nua Internet Surveys March, 2000)
  • WORLD TOTAL 304.36 Million Africa 2.58 Million Asia/Pacific 68.90 Million Europe 83.35 Million Middle East 1.90 Million USA & Canada 136.86 Million South America 10.74 Million
  • What browser are they using? "...it doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that there are differing browsers with differing characteristics, and there are LOTS of them already out there. Even if the best "selling" browser changes, the chances of the majority of users converting to that browser within a short period of time are very slim. Even if the percentage of users drops lower, 25% of 276+ million is a respectable figure - around 80 million."
  • Netscape (Navigator and Communicator) 36% MS Internet Explorer 58% All Others 6%
  • Approximately 80% of both Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer users are utilizing 4.xx (or higher) versions of their respective browsers.
  • Connection speed is rising. Only 3% of internet users surveyed still connect at a speed of 14K bits/second. Over 65% of users connect at speeds between 28K and 1Meg bits/second.
  • CONNECTION SPEEDS Less than 14.4K bps 3% 28K bps 17% 33.6K bps 16% 56K bps 24% 56K - 1M bps 14% Greater than 1M bps 26%
• NUA Internet Surveys (November 2000)
  • World Total 407.1 million Africa 3.11 million Asia/Pacific 104.88 million Europe 113.14 million Middle East 2.40 million Canada & USA 167.12 million Latin America 16.45 million
  • SpyLOG's latest report show that Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is used by more than 86 percent of Russian Internet users. Netscape's share of the Russian browser market stands at 12.65 percent. Microsoft's Windows 98 is used by 65 percent of Russia's online population, followed by Windows 95 (16 percent), Windows NT (13.5 percent), and Windows 2000 (3.2 percent). Less than 1 percent of Internet users use Apple's MacOS.
• The Counter (part of Internet.com - data from their customers - October 2000)
  • 1. MSIE 5.x 369341075 (66%) 2. MSIE 4.x 86672979 (15%) 3. Netscape 4.x 72932564 (13%) 4. Netscape comp. 9330162 (1%) 5. Unknow 6077557 (1%) 6. MSIE 2.x 3958924 (0%) 7. MSIE 3.x 2561440 (0%) 8. Netscape 3.x 2552658 (0%) 9. Opera x.x 719852 (0%) 10. Netscape 5.x 273951 (0%) 11. Netscape 2.x 93333 (0%) 12. Netscape 1.x 4031 (0%) 13. MSIE 1.x 1353 (0%)
  • That must be 1353 access to their web site with MSIE 1.x rather than users, since I can't imagine that 369,341,075 out of the estimated world total of about 350 million web users went to their site. Still, there are still people using Netscape 2.x, MSIE 1.x etc. as of October 2000.
  • Javascript results: Javascript 1.2+: 464481253 (83%) Javascript <1.2: 5566460 (1%) Javascript false: 84472166 (15%)
  • OS: 1. Win 98 367399748 (66%) 2. Win 95 88507875 (15%) 3. Win NT 41957364 (7%) 4. Win 2000 21143271 (3%) 5. Unknown 15764251 (2%) 6. Mac 12126093 (2%) 7. WebTV 3908179 (0%) 8. Linux 1730106 (0%) 9. Unix 1014443 (0%) 10. Win 3.x 866477 (0%) 11. OS/2 72744 (0%) 12. Amiga 29328 (0%)
• NetCraft Survey(last updated December 2000)
  • a survey of Web Server software usage on Internet connected computers. We collect and collate as many hostnames providing an http service as we can find, and systematically poll each one with an HTTP request for the server name. In the December 2000 survey we received responses from 25,675,581 sites
  • Not a survey of users but of servers and the software they are running. Useful for when we address dynamically generated sites and server-side issues?
• BrowserWatch
  • Not detailed enough for me. I want to know version numbers not just company.
• U.S. Census Bureau Disability Statistics
• How the internet is improving the lives of Americans with disabilities - Harris Poll, June 2000
• Browsers for mobile devices?
• More info on WebTV?
• Assistive technologies? Combos of ATs and Web agents? (web agents different than user agents?)

Technology Deployment and Conformance

• Conformance Claims to WCAG from Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA). As of 29 May 2001:
  • WCAG 1.0 Level A
    • Google finds about 2,520 pages.
    • Alta Vista - 1,773
    • HotBot - 2,100
    • Snap and InfoSeek searches seem to have broken
  • WCAG 1.0 Level AA - Google finds about 1,220 pages.
  • WCAG 1.0 Level AAA - Google finds about 1,310 pages.
• Database of sites that claim "Bobby Approved" - maintained by CAST. Note that these sites have not been verified by CAST or anyone else. Bobby is an evaluation tool used to help people determine conformance to WCAG.
• The Client-Side Conundrum by Ray Valdes (August 2000, Web Techniques)
  • Had a bot to crawl the Media Metrix Top 500 list to catalog the technologies that each site employs.
  • Found:
    • 79.9% of the sites use Tables
    • 62.0% use JavaScript
    • 38.2% use Imagemaps
    • 20.6% use Style sheets
    • 2.1% use ActiveX
    • 1.1% use Java
  • Over the past 18 months, the statistics have changed. JavaScript increased steadily. Style sheet usage has doubled. Java and ActiveX remain low.
  • High table usage likely for positioning.
• WAP (from WAP 2001 update - powerpoint file)
  • 10,000 WAP sites from 95 countries
  • 5+ million WAP-readable pages
  • 50 million WAP-enabled handsets
  • Users by geographic area:
    • Europe: BT Cellnet has 660,000 users
    • U.S. - Sprint has 1,000,000 wireless web users
    • Latin America - Brazil's WAP subscriber uptake surpassing expectations
  • Hits to WAP sites:
    • Genie: 62.5 million hits in December (500% increase since Sept).
    • Digital Bridges: 15 million hits in 6 months
  • Virtually every mobile phone will be WAP-enabled by EOY 2001 (IDC)
  • 60,000 people shop using mobile phones every day (Ericsson)
  • Next generation of WAP will include:
    • XHTML
    • TCP
    • Color graphics
    • Animation
    • Large file downloading
    • Location-smart services
    • Streaming media
    • Data synchronization with desktop PIM
• XML?
• XSLT?
• WebTV?
• Instructional Software Accessibility: A Status Report - by Diane Cordry Golden, Ph.D. Companies who produce instructional software for students (preschool through high school) were surveyed regarding their product accessibility.

Usability

• What drives repeat visitors to your website?

Other References

• Long list of Internet Surveys and Statistics
• CyberAtlas - Lots of data, including info on wireless and inner cities vs. rural.
• Yahoo's list
• U.S. Census Bureau - Demographics and Census Data

$Date: 2004/04/27 02:00:06 $ Wendy Chisholm