Internet round-up
24 August 2010 - Will Google update search results as you type?
A new Google experiment has been spotted which alters search results as you type your query (for a demo, see video below). It is currently only available to a small sets of users, but going on past experience Google will either turn this into a full-fledged feature or discard it.
It may well never make its way to the mainstream Google experience, but some are already expressing a great deal of concern about it, particularly with regards to queries that begin with words that could yield undesired Not Safe For Work results.
09 August 2010 - Facebook second most visited website in the UK
Last month, Facebook was revealed to have half a billion registered users around the world, and is the leading UK social network, with 26m British users.
In June 2010, Facebook accounted for 7.14% of all UK Internet visits and over half (54.48%) of all visits to a social networking websites. It was the second most visited website in the UK, only beaten by Google (9.59% market share for June). However, using the measure of total page views rather than visits, Facebook is way ahead of Google, accounting for 16.73% of UK page views during June. In other words: 1 in every 6 Internet pages viewed in the UK was a Facebook page.
Facebook also has a very high average average time spent on its site: almost half an hour.
Source: Experian Hitwise
29 June 2010 - Social networks receive more UK internet visits than search engines
During May 2010, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits, whilst search engines accounted for 11.33%. May was the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK, in terms of visits.
Facebook was the most popular social network, receiving 55% of all UK visits - almost three times as many as the next most popular social network, YouTube. Twitter is now the third most popular social network in the UK.
However, despite its popularity, Facebook doesn't yet dominate the UK social networking market to the extent that Google dominates the search market. Together www.google.co.uk and www.google.com accounted for nine in every 10 web searches carried out in the UK during May. Consequently, Google UK was the most visited website in the UK during May, accounting for 9.29% of all visits. Facebook was in second place, accounting for 7.04% of all UK Internet visits during the same month.
Source: Experian Hitwise
10 June 2010 - Google search engine offers a personalised homepage
British and American Google users can now set their own background to their iGoogle homepages. To do so, users must be registered with Google and then login to their account to adjust their iGoogle backgrounds.
You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.
The feature was rolled out in the US last week and is being rolled out across the UK over the next few days. It can be identified by the presence of a link in the lower left-hand corner of Google's homepage.
Those Google visitors who do not want to personalise their homepage will not be forced to. To learn more go to Google.co.uk.
21 April 2010 - Zeus, the internet banking virus is back
A virus named Zeus, that steals online banking details from infected computer users, is more powerful than ever, warns web security company, Trusteer. It says it has seen a completely new version of the Trojan Zeus virus in one of every 3,000 of the 5.5m computers it monitors in the US and UK.
Zeus works by stealing the login information (recording keystrokes) of a user when they are on target websites - usually banks and other financial institutions. The user's data is then sent to a remote server to be used and sold on by cyber-criminals.
Trusteer claims that Zeus 1.6 can infect people using the web browsers Firefox and Internet Explorer. Amit Klein, the firm's chief technology officer, said that his research team expects this new version of Zeus to significantly increase fraud losses, since nearly 30% of internet users bank online with Firefox.
Source: Infosecurity USA
5 April 2010 - Internet use - Top 10 European countries
Data from 30 September 2009 showed that the UK had 46.7 million internet users, second only to Germany, with 54.2 million. Following behind was Russia (45.3 million), France (43.1), Italy (30.0), Spain (29.1), Turkey (26.5), Poland (20.0), and the Netherlands (14.3). Ukraine was last with 10.4 million users.
Source: Internet World Stats
30 March 2010 - Top 50 UK e-retailers
The sixteenth quarterly edition of the IMRG-HITWISE HOT SHOPS LIST provides a unique insight into the top 50 UK e-retailers, based on February 2010 rankings.
The leading four brands retained their dominance of the UK online shopping scene: Amazon.co.uk (1), Argos (2), Play (3) & Apple Computer (4). Amazon.com (5), Tesco (6) & John Lewis (8) all moved up one place with Easyjet (10) entering the top 10 by moving up 2 places. Marks & Spencer (7) fell two places and Next (9) dropped a single place.
The biggest movers this quarter were: Thomas Cook (15) moving up thirty one positions, British Airways (31) moved up eleven places, The Trainline (24) and Thomson Holidays (11) both climbed ten.
Source: Experian Hitwise
02 March 2010 - Google browser translates websites
Google's new version of its web browser, Chrome, offers automatic translation of websites, as well as enhanced privacy controls.
Users will be able to specify that they want every web page they visit to appear in a certain language, also to set privacy controls that are specific to individual websites.
Visit the Google 'Chrome' page to find out more.
01 February 2010 - Britons become biggest internet spenders
According to a new report by the Centre for Retail Research on behalf of price comparison service Kelkoo, in 2009 shoppers in the UK spent more online than any other consumers in Europe.
The study showed Britons spent £38 billion on purchases made via the web and this figure is expected to grow by 12.4 per cent to £42.7 billion in 2010.
Moreover, the BBC reports that the number of people who spent over £1,000 on a single internet purchase rose from 12% in 2008 to 25% in 2009.
In total, online purchases accounted for 9.5% of all British retail sales in 2009.
01 February 2010 - Bing grabs 10% of US search market
In has been reported that the search engine, Bing, now has a 10% share of the US search engine market, eating into Google's dominance.
31 January 2010 - Local authority & government websites "most difficult to use"
According to a survey by user experience consultancy, Webcredible, local authority and government websites are some of the most difficult to navigate and find information on. Following closely behind are financial services, retail and ecommerce websites.
More than 1,000 web users were polled between September and December 2009 on which industry sector has the most difficult to use websites.
2009 internet... in numbers
- 90 trillion - The number of emails sent on the internet in 2009.
- 247 billion - Average number of email messages per day.
- 1.4 billion - The number of email users worldwide.
- 100 million - New email users since the year before.
- 81% - The percentage of emails that were spam.
- 92% - Peak spam levels late in the year.
- 24% - Increase in spam since last year.
- 200 billion - The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).
Websites
- 234 million - The number of websites as of December 2009.
- 47 million - Added websites in 2009.
Domain names
- 81.8 million - .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
- 12.3 million - .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
- 7.8 million - .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
- 76.3 million - The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
- 187 million - The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
- 8% - The increase in domain names since the year before.
Internet users
- 1.73 billion - internet users worldwide (September 2009).
- 18% - Increase in internet users since the previous year.
- 738,257,230 - internet users in Asia.
- 418,029,796 - internet users in Europe.
- 252,908,000 - internet users in North America.
- 179,031,479 - internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
- 67,371,700 - internet users in Africa.
- 57,425,046 - internet users in the Middle East.
- 20,970,490 - internet users in Oceania / Australia.
Web browsers
- 62.7% - Internet Explorer
- 24.6% - Firefox
- 4.6% - Chrome
- 4.5% - Safari
- 2.4% - Opera
- 1.2% - Other
Source: Website stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee.
15 January 2010 - snow problems cause traffic to Weather and Transport websites to reach all time high
During the week ending January 9th 2010, British people flocked online to keep up to date with the latest snow news. As a result, UK Internet visits to both transport and Weather websites reached an all time high. Weather websites accounted for 1.5% of all UK Internet visits - three times more than the same week last year, and 26.9% more than the previous peak during the snow in February 2009.
The 12th most visited website in the UK last week was BBC Weather, and the Met Office homepage ranked 22nd. National Rail Enquiries became the 56th most visited website in the UK (up from 80th the previous week), whilst traffic to transport websites in general was up 28.9% on the same week in 2009.
Source: Experian Hitwise
January 2010 - online retail traffic experiences last minute surge prior to VAT increase
On 1 January 2010 the UK VAT rate returned to 17.5%. As a result, UK Internet searches relating to the increase also grew. Nearly 47% of people searching for information on the VAT increase visited Government-run websites. News and Media websites received 13.3% of clicks, whilst Business and Finance sites came in third (12.9%). The latter category paid for 26.8% of the traffic it received (i.e. sponsored links), with Business Information sites (e.g. Business Link) bidding aggressively on a number of terms.
Only 4.2% of searchers actually ended up at a retail website, which implies that retailers may have missed an opportunity. However, looking at traffic to the Shopping and Classifieds category, it’s clear that the VAT increase led to a last minute surge in visits. Between the week ending 26/12/09 and 02/01/10, UK Internet visits to retail websites increased by 13%. During the previous year the increase over the same period was just 2%.
The week ending 02/01/10 saw the House and Garden sector having the largest increase in traffic - 67%. Other sectors selling high price items also experienced above average increases, with the Sport & Fitness, Computers and Appliances & Electronics categories all doing well.
Source: Experian Hitwise
22 December 2009 - spam "mastermind" fined £116,000
A 26-year old man has been fined $A210,000 (£116,000) by an Australian court after admitting his involvement in the international network that could send 10 billion e-mails a day.
Lance Atkinson, a New Zealander living on the Gold Coast, Australia, was accused of being the mastermind of the world's largest known "spam gang", along with his brother, Shane.
14 December 2009 - Google language translation
According to Marissa Meyer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, Google has plans to bring out a language translation service.
"Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites," she says. "And then invoked the translation software a second and third time – to not only then present the results in your native language, but then translated those sites in full when you clicked through."
14 December 2009 - An omniscient, omnivorous Google is coming; it knows what you want, even if you don't
Marissa Meyer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, sees the real future of Google as the personalisation of intuitive search. She wants Google to be able to present information to users before they even know what they're looking for. She sees this capability as not far off, and it's what she calls the 'omnivorous' search engine.
December 7 2009- 'Cyber Monday'
According to the webiste Hitwise, 'Cyber Monday' (December 7th 2009) and Sunday December 6th were the joint busiest days for online retailers in 2009. Compared to 2008, when the busiest day for online retailers was Sunday November 30t, it means that pre-Christmas peak in visits to online retailers has moved one week closer to Christmas.
Consumers spend time browsing and comparing products and prices on the Sunday, before making their actual purchases on 'Cyber Monday' itself.
December 2009 - Google & Personalised Search
Google has extended its personalised search functionality to users who are not even signed in to a Google product (Gmail, Google Analytics etc). What this means is that when you carry out a search on Google, it will provide results that are aimed at higher relevancy to you, the individual user, as opposed to relevancy for the average person.
See what Google have to say about personalised search...
1 December 2009 - Google's 'Chrome' browser overtakes Safari
Google's Chrome browser is now the third most popular browser in terms of usage share. Chrome recently overtook Safari and now has a 4.6% market share.
Source: Net Applications
November 2009 - M35 Photography website launches
M35 Photography is the personal website of Lindsey Harris, owner of M35 Design. It features photographs primarily taken in and around Poole, Bournemouth and the Dorset area. The current emphasis is on Poole Harbour, as well as photographs of people.
October 2009 - How do people search for travel in the UK?
In the UK, travel websites rely on search engines for two fifths of their traffic. In order to understand a bit more about what the British are actually searching for, the website 'Hitwise' recently carried out some analysis of search behaviour within the UK travel industry.
During August 2009, searches for agencies \ holidays was the most searched for category, whilst 'travel material', 'ferries', 'car hire' and 'cruises' was the least.
June 2009 - Microsoft launches their new search engine, 'Bing'
Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, officially launched on June 3 2009.
Excluding Google UK and US, but compared to Yahoo!, Ask and Microsoft's other main property, Live Search, Bing's daily market share of the search engine market in the UK grew significantly following its launch.
On June 3rd traffic to Bing peaked and it became the eighth most visited website in the UK and the third ranked search engine, accounting for 10.8% of the UK market.
However, since then traffic to the site has declined, although the average time spent at Bing has increased to eight and a half minutes. This might suggest that consumers are spending more time on the site and exploring its benefits, rather than visiting it out of curiosity.
Importance of
a search engine friendly web site 
