Friday, July 07, 2006

The internet is bigger than Al Gore...


How big is the internet? According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there is a worldwide Internet population of 580 million users, as of 2002. The International Telecommunications Union provides a 15 percent higher estimate of 665 million users. In other words, you, me, your family and red-headed step cousin are online.

Who is on the internet? Of these, roughly 30 percent are in North America, 31 percent are in Europe, and 38 percent are in other parts of the world.

How long are they online? The average global Internet user spends 11 hours and 24 minutes online per month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The average user in the United States spends more than twice that amount of time online: on average, 25 hours and 25 minutes at home and 74 hours and 26 minutes at work.

What are they doing online? According the Pew Internet and American Life project the top activity is sending emails: 52% of users. The second most used internet activity is getting news: 32%. The remaining user scenario goes like this:
- Searching to find information 29%
- Surf the web for fun 23%
- Looking for info on a hobby 21%
- Doing an internet search for answers 19%
- Doing work related research 19%
- Researching a product before buying 19%
- Checking the weather 17%
- Sending an instant message 14%

How many searches are done each day? SearchEngineWatch.com estimates that there are 319 million searches each day.

What is a blog and how many blogs are there? A blog is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so that the reader sees the most recent post first. The style is typically personal and informal. Currently, Technorati is tracking 7.9 million blogs. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every 5 months. It has already done so at this pace four times, which means that in the last 20 months, the blogosphere has increased in size by over 16 times.

What does this mean to you? OPTIMIZE YOUR ONLINE MARKETING!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't Al invent the internet? I heard him say so himself. How could he invent something bigger than him, huh? He has gained weight you know. Haven't you seen him?

Walker Thompson said...

Well, it is a running joke, I guess that he created the internet. But, in reality, he did not. You can read about the Al Gore quote here: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Anonymous said...

Good ol Al. I know he sits and creates at least 25% of the 319 million searches per day, BY HIMSELF! Crazy stuff.