Firefox Statistics

[Neat Pete]

Today, for the first time ever, my Webalizer stats shows some figures for Firefox, an open source product which has been round for a couple of years.

(a) PowWeb technical staff had previously rejected my suggestion that Firefox and Safari stats be displayed. I was told the software did not need to be upgraded, some minor confusion there between software and configuration from the staff handling customer suggestions.

(b) The figures displayed today are Netscape-6 18.44% and Firefox 2.64% - Sorry, still wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. What do other Webalizer users see??

(c) A friend on PowWeb has no figures showing for Firefox. She has however got Mozilla 5.0 at 24.72% so far for December 2007 - this is especially interesting since the Mozilla only went to version 1.7. I advised Support of this but to no avail. No Safari neither of course.

Perhaps in another six months time we'll see Safari.

[Seawitchartist]

Hi Pete
Is your interest in Firefox and other browsers that their visits are indeed being counted at all and not missed out?
I can't see the value of knowing what browser a visitor was using if thats what it's recorded for, I would like to know the countries my visits were coming from, my awestats has a slot for that which it doesn't use:confused:

George
www.seawitchartist.com (http://www.seawitchartist.com)

[Neat Pete]

With regard to Firefox, the whole log is being processed, the problem is that it's being processed incorrectly. Browser analysis is important for two reasons. (a) Industry trends you read about in magazines happen to your own web site. (b) Not all browsers are the same and not all browsers are standards-compliant- so if your shopping-cart check-out fails or is buggy on a certain browesr, you know exactly how much money you have just lost.

As for countries, you should have it switched on. It's interesting, but the novelty soon wears off, as it's the same every month. It may give you some ideas of what sort of content to provide for overseas visitors, or whether you need to have some translation pages. Actually, my logs show people just use Google to do a translation on the fly, or they can read enough English anyway, or they are only looking at the pictures. Most people in the USA have no idea what a chav is anyway. Some web sites in North America had massive traffic, but advertisers would not touch then - all the traffic came from South America and the surfers could not buy the products. Country analysis in Australia is a mess because there is always about 20% "unknown" on the listings I have seen.

PS: there is a website called www dot ban comic sans dot com.

[Neat Pete]

Latest Stats, percentages as analysed by Poweb servers...

Netscape 6 = 13.19%
Firefox = 8.11%
Opera = 0.55%
Safari = 0.00%

Reality check anyone???

[Neat Pete]

Just an update, a browser analysis for the first four days of January 2008.

PowWeb: IE7 36.3%, IE6 33.1%, Firefox 21.0, Safari Nil, All other browsers 1.2%, Robots 8.4%.

Same logs, downloaded and analysed: IE7 35.6%, IE6 33.3%, Firefox 15.9%, Safari 4.2%, All other browsers 1.2%, Robots 8.8%.

Reasonable agreement, with one glaring exception. One line in a config file at PowWeb and it would be fixed.

And for all you Microsoft watchers out there, IE7 has now passed IE6. Previous figures: Nov 2007 showed IE7 at 29.5% and IE6 at 40.9% and Dec 2007 figures were IE7 30.9% and IE6 37.2%. Given that a lot of people here are currently on holidays, the figures imply that the home percentage of IE7 is higher than the percentage of IE7 at work.

[YvetteKuhns]

Your figures are a trend for your website's audience. If you have a website about Mac hardware or software, your browser stats would differ a great deal. As for your implication that the home percentage of IE7 is higher than the percentage of IE7 at work, that may or may not be true for your audience.

My clients are from different time zones and have different target audiences. Most have visitors using mostly IE. My own website has four categories of visitors: those who want to work for me (graphics designers often use Macs), businesses/people who want to hire me (most use IE), people who read my articles for free help (many use IE but I have had a lot of Mac questions lately), and those who steal my contents. (Robots not included in list of visitors.) Watching what people use and meeting their needs is important. But sometimes your visits are low for other browsers if your website doesn't look good in other browsers! Not a case for some of us, but definitely noticeable for people who hired me to fix this problem.

The percentage of people using Firefox, Safari and Opera as well as Konqueror are higher for my site and some of the sites I manage. It is very interesting to compare these figures. Mick's custom motorcycle airbrushing website has more mobile visits than my site has. Rick's motorsports website has more IE visitors by far. Basically, your figures are most important to you. They differ from other websites with different target audiences.

I totally agree that browser stats are important. Country stats are useful, especially if you need to encourage or discourage visits based on geography. If you provide a service to people in your locality only, you should make it clear on your website to reduce bandwidth usage. Visitors should not waste time visiting your website if they do not fit your target audience.

[Neat Pete]

The figures I presented relate to four domain names all added together. One of these four has two major sub-sections which really should be domain names too, giving a total of six different interest groups.

None, repeat none, of these groups are geeky, technical, about computers etc etc. Thus I believe my stats are of general interest and they represent a cross section of general internet users. There is no stuff like "Graphics programs for Mac users", or "get your Firefox plug-in here" to pollute the results. And the figures show much the same rdesults as published by the industry.

Over a long period, I have established that about 50% of the hits are from Australia, and the rest from overseas. Four of the six topics have world-wide appeal, including the two biggest.

A friend was most amazed when I pointed out that her web site ran equally over 24 hours with very little variation, she thought her website was just local. And I mean real visitors, not people who look at one page and leave.

Yvette, I have read your post with considerable interest, but do you have some stats on browser breakup you could share, also some info on hours of the day. Also did you look at your stats on 1st Jan and see any New year's Eve effect?

[YvetteKuhns]

It makes more sense to compare monthly stats for the same website than to compare to another website unless it shares a similar audience. Some clients only provide products or services to one geographic location (one state in the US or one province in Canada, for example), so whatever is the popular browser, search engine or OS in that location is important.

Web stats are private for my clients, so I can't really post details here. For my own website, I see that we had a snow storm on Sunday, December 2nd that dropped my (local) visits. The day that PowWeb had an outage, Saturday, December 22nd, also showed a large drop in visits. My largest number of visits in December were on December 21rd through December 31. December 29th visits are (still) missing and the outage messed up visits for the 22nd.

My browser visits for December 2007:
IE 7 26.2%
IE 6 25.6%
All IE 53.3%
Firefox 18%
Netscape 1.6%
Others 26.9%

My visitors used these operating systems:
Windows 71.3 %
Unknown 15.7 %
Linux 8.6 %
Macintosh 4 %
BSD 0 %
Sun Solaris 0 %
AmigaOS 0 %
Irix 0 %
Unknown Unix system 0 %
Aix 0 %

By the way, some of my clients use a Mac, not just the graphics designers. Lewis sells designer clothes from the East Coast, Ian M. has a history site for England, and there may be others. Most clients don't visit MY website.

[IanS]

Ian M. has a history site for England, and there may be others.
Is it ENGLAND or Great Britain????

[YvetteKuhns]

My client Mick paints motorcycles in California. His target audience differs from mine, though we both reach a global audience with various budgets.

Mick's browser stats for December 2007:
IE 7 41.2%
IE 6 43.9%
All IE 85.3%
Firefox 10.5%
Netscape 0.2%
Others 3.8% (including Safari 2.4%, Opera 0.3%, phone browser, WebTV)

Operating systems:
Windows 95.7%
Mac 3.0%

His website is most popularly visited between 10am and midnight, but it is busy all of the time.

There is a drop in visits on December 2nd and December 22nd as noted in my own stats. His highest number of visits in December was December 30th, followed by December 9th. His December 29th visits are (still) missing.

January visits were close, but his highest visits EVER was January 5th, followed closely by January 3rd. The Easy Rider bike show was January 5th and 6th and Mick was there. The increase in visits may have been due to the show. They had terrible weather, but the show was indoors.

Compare Mick's visitors with mine and see a difference. Rick's motorsports website probably shows a similar trend to Mick's. Rick was featured on a muscle car show on Spike TV at the end of the month and their commercial aired between the show. They had a jump in visits in October when on TV, so December probably has a jump in visits.

[Doc C]

There's a difference? :)

[YvetteKuhns]

Is it ENGLAND or Great Britain????

He is from England. The site has a dot co dot uk address. The target audience could be England, Great Britain or beyond. The website is about Beckenham history. I could have reworded my statement to say that he is from England.

Excuse my poor wording. I was ill all weekend and have not yet recovered. No, I wasn't drinking. That flu or virus going around finally got to me.

[Doc C]

I was shopping all weekend and now recovering. :D

[IanS]

You're forgiven Yvette - it's just that those from overseas often refer to England when they mean the UK or Great Britain. A bit like us over here referring to North America meaning the US - that annoys those in Canada!

[Doc C]

I remember my geography from grade school. :)

England is a country. The United Kingdom/Great Britain is a bunch of countries.

At least that's what Sister Theresa said.

[YvetteKuhns]

I also thought that England was one of a few countries in the United Kingdom. Ian Muir is from England and also a PowWeb forum member. I was clear to note Ian M so he would not be confused with Ian S, another PowWeb forum member. ;)

[Charon]

England is one country on the island known as Great Britain.

Great Britain is the term used for the island containing the contiguous nations of England, Scotland and Wales.

England, Scotland and Wales together with the province of Northern Ireland, form the country officially known as
"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" or simply the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom does not include the Isle of Man (which
lies between Great Britain and the island of Ireland) and the Channel Islands (which lie off the North coast of France).

[Doc C]

Except on Tuesdays when everyone just calls it home. :D

[YvetteKuhns]

Apologies to Neat Pete for going off-topic. We were discussing statistics and in particular, the increase in Firefox users.

[Doc C]

It's Ian's fault. Check post #9. He started it.

I never use statistics.

Disraeli said it best, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

[Neat Pete]

That's what smokers say when they deny the reports from the US Surgeon General !!!

[Doc C]

Yep, we do.

[Neat Pete]

I read it in the paper. It was next to an article about Paris Hilton.

[Neat Pete]

I just found some figures on the net. When it comes to the "browser wars" anyone can compare themselves with these across the board figures.

Quote: According to data for December compiled by Net Applications, Firefox accounted for a record 16.8% of all browsers that visited the 40,000 sites the California company monitors for its clients. Microsoft's Internet Explorer's share, meanwhile, slipped during from November's 77.4% to 76% last month.

[YvetteKuhns]

I still think that comparing stats with websites with a similar target audience is more helpful. But even a general comparison is better than not bothering at all.