Some interesting web statistics

In my work, I recently got to have a look (and run some statistics) on a world-class major web site (I’m not going to disclose the name, and if you know what I’m talking about then please don’t mention it in the comments – I’m not allowed to talk about it and so can’t you).

As I though it would be mighty interesting to find out what the normal internet users out there are using – not just “on my very technical and geek oriented web site I have 70% Firefox users on Linux” – here goes nothing.

Some meta data:

  • These are statistics for our entire traffic in the last couple of weeks – its just that most of it is one large web site.
  • This information is a bit US-centric but less so then one would expect (the Geo-IP information is also interesting, but I’m not going to talk about it).
  • Lastly, this summary is based on traffic amount – I’m didn’t feel like improving the logic to count users, so if Internet Explorer users on average spend more time in the site then Firefox users, then we will see the Firefox share decline compared with Internet Explorer – I think this is still fair.

And now for some numbers:

Browser breakdown:

Borwsers are ordered by provider, I summed up all minor versions into the major versions, so Firefox 1 below is actually Firefox 1.5, etc’.

Browser % Notes
Camino 0.02 This is a Gecko(Mozilla) based browser for Macs
Firefox 1 0.23 I wouldn’t have believed people are still using Firefox 1!
Firefox 2 14.6
Firefox 3 10.1 The Firefox 2 take up is not as impressive as one would hope, in the general public.
Firefox 4 0.00 I saw some hits from something calling itself Firefox 4.0.0.14. Not sure what it is.
Konqueror 3 0.00 Our product probably doesn’t even work on Konqueror
MSIE 4.0 0.00 Again – Wow. People actually still use this stuff? (Expect more below)
MSIE 5.0 0.00 Another dead browser
MSIE 5.5 0.00 etc’
MSIE 6.0 23.2 Its a shame that so many people are still using this crap.
MSIE 6.5 0.00 This is probably a fake
MSIE 7.0 45.2 As you can see the IE 7 take up puts Firefox 3 to shame.
MSIE 8.0 0.02 Some people are using the IE 8.0 beta. We should probably test against it as well.
Minefield 3 0.00 Minefiled is the Firefox 3.0 beta. I didn’t sum it into the Firefox 3 stats to show that some people…
Netscape 7 0.00 I removed several <0.01% entries, but not this one, because I think its amusing 🙂
Netscape 8 0.00 While both Netscape browsers get 0% here, there are actually two orders of magnitude more hits from Netscape 7 then 8…
Opera Embed 0.00 This is basically Playstation 3’s and Wii’s browsers.
Opera 5 0.00 I’m not sure who still uses Opera 5
Opera 8 0.00 Opera 8 I think it only used on cellular phones today, but it could also be some ancient machines owned by down-curve people
Opera 9 0.27 What is remarkable about this low figure, is that its lower then the Opera 5 figure.
Safari 1.3 0.00
Safari 2 0.22
Safari 3 7.61
SeaMonkey 1 0.04 This is the original Mozilla’s Communicator suite’s successor

OS breakdown:

Operating systems are broken down into percentage use (traffic based, as I’ve mentioned) by provider and then in each provider the versions are broken down with percentage out of that provider’s share. Order is by market share, so the 1st place is no surprise to anyone. I was surprised to see which other OSs trump Linux though…

OS Version % Notes
windows 87.6
xp 74.7
vista 22.6 Apparently MS’s Vista push is working
2000 2.03
2003 0.51
98 0.12 It is AMAZING that a significant share (believe me, from this traffic, 0.12% is significant traffic) comes from this old junk
NT 4 0.00 I’m actually more surprised to find NT 4 here, then the next few entries.
NT 6.1 0.00 Probably a fake, I don’t think this is Vista SP1
ME 0.00 I’m not surprised we get more 98 then this.
95 0.00 Tada! we did get about 20 hits from Windows 95
4.10 0.00 Not sure what this is. Could be a fake, or a mislabeld Windows 98
NT 7.3 0.00 Undoubtedly a fake
CE 0.00 Really – we got 1 hit for this
Mac OS X: Intel 9.07
10.5 45.6
10 28.2
10.4 26.1
10.6 0.01 This is “Snow Leopard” – Apple’s next operating system which is in closed beta.
Mac OS X: PowerPC 2.64
10.4 47.1
Mach 38.9
10.5 13.8
Mac OS X total 11.7 This is the sum of the above two entries, for convenience
Nintendo 2.76 Nintendo is stronger the Sony here. Not surprising.
Playstation 1.84
Linux 0.54 I didn’t split by vendor here as its quite complicated
other 0.07 Fakes and stuff that didn’t volunteer the operating system. I don’t think you’d find Solaris here

What I find most sad here, though when thinking about it – not that surprising – is that there are almost 8 times more video consoles that are used to browse the web then there are Linux computers. It could be said that this web site doesn’t attract a techie crowd and there are large percentage of techies that use Firefox and Linux and this summary is biased against them, but I don’t have any way to know if it is right or wrong.

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