Slashdot Mirror
Browser Stats For The BBC Homepage
Lord_Scrumptious writes "An interesting article titled 'The software used to access the BBC homepage' has recently been published on a blog by a BBC employee. It's all about the different browsers and operating systems accessing the BBC's homepage. The analysis is from a week of page requests in September 2005. Not surprisingly, Internet Explorer accounted for 85% of site visits, but Firefox had a very respectable 9.7% share. Even requests from Sony's handheld PSP device were recorded, but interestingly there's no mention of mobile phone devices."
Finally some reliable website records which arn't off some obscure coding page. :)
Linux (various distributions) 0.41%
Windows Vista 0.15%
MSFT's unreleased os has nearly the same market share as linux?
We've got a long way to go.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
On a related note, I hosted some pictures on my website last week that were posted into a fark.com forum, 47.6% of fark readers seem to use Firefox (from some 14,000 hits in two days) - I bet slashdot beats this though!
I visit the BBC web site multiple times a day, but I haven't been to the "main" page in months. I expect most regular Firefox visitors will have bookmarks or just type a URL that goes past the main page.
The author does point this out:
And I must stress again, these figures don't represent the breakdown of visitors to the BBC site as a whole, they are based on requests to the homepage alone, over the course of one week in September. Nevertheless I think they provide an interesting snapshot of web activity.
but it should have been avoided
So it's probably about right for UK business desktop stats.
Deleted
at companies that run Windows clients. I wouldn't bother to install Firefox more of less by hand on hundreds of desktops myself. The Firefox guys should really get a MSI build ready for easy deployment _and_ update. Firefox is just not 100% enterprise ready like IE is with it's managabilty by group policies. I wonder how many people check bbc.co.uk from their workplace. They might even have Firefox installed on their home computer.
"but Firefox had a very respectable 9.7% share."
I use firefox and even I can't keep a strait face reading that line. I mean have some self-worth, man. There's nothing respectable about that. Can't we aim just a tad higher here? Especially if we're gonna tag on the word "very"?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
One thing I noticed when I installed Firefox, is that it comes with just one live bookmark. It is called: "Latest Headlines", and pulls the feed from http://fxfeeds.mozilla.org/rss20.xml/ But, this feed is the same as the main stories feed at BBC. I would figure people would click on these and get some more exposure to the BBC site, more than usual. This has actually made myself more aware of those stories, and made me more likely to visit again.
Also those web savvy enough to be using firefox would go directly to the section of the bbc webby they need (like news.bbc.co.uk). I find nothing particularly useful about the bbc homepage.
Firefox comes a preloaded RSS feed ... that points to the BBC for news
:-)
Maybe so, but that's not the homepage, which is from where the stats were taken
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
You miss the point of interest with the BBC; it is the number one website in the UK and thus has a reasonably representative audience. Slashdot, however much we love it, does not. I'm thinking male, 14-30, pretty high tech outlook - implying a skew towards Linux / Firefox / etc etc.
Bottom line - the beeb gives us a good painting; it's not a picture, true, but it is a good picture. Mozilla folk should be pleased with themselves; their strategy has worked rather well.
We need to remember that people who do unusual things with unusual browsers are an incredibly small fraction of all internet users. The message of the article is that there's very rougly a 8/1/1 split between IE, firefox and 'other'. That message is not affected in the slightest by Opera, lynx or any other niche browser.
Anyone considered that, maybe, that might have influenced the results? Having a default bookmark as the page of the study? You wouldnt take browser results from MSN.com or whatever IE's default home page is.
Nevermind me though, I just suggested that a pro-Firefox poll might be biased. Karma be dammed!
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
All the fake "I'm MSIE" Opera ID strings contain "(Opera)" by the end, so any self-respecting stats program should register them correctly.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Utter rubbish!
Have a look at alexa and you'll see that the bbc site deals with 20 to 30 BILLION hits a day. Slashdots 1 billion is not going to make much difference to their servers.
The relevant information is not the raw number, but the trend. If you see Firefox gaining 1% every month of so, then is is reasonable to conclude that Firefox is gaining marketshare--in fact, it is even reasonable to assume that that gain is about 1% per month, since statistical anomalies and distortions caused by "AOL tweaking their cache configs" averages out to noise in a long-term trend.
While you are right that an accurate snapshot is impossible, snapshots only matter to magazine writers facing a deadline. In both the economic and intellectual marketplaces, what matters is the trend.
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
Is the BBC homepage supposed to reflect some important or signifigant user base?
Yes. It is probably the broadest cross section of mostly British web users you are likely to find on a single site.
The fact that nearly 10% of those users use firefox is particularly relevant, and is a good weapon for those of us who do commercial web design to persuade our clients that the extra work to support alternative browsers properly *is* worth it.