My Top 5 Browser Stats Surprising.

MSIE Taking A Man-Sized Beating

[incrediBILL]

I just looked at my browser stats in Google Analytics and saw the following:

1. Internet Explorer 51.45%
2. Firefox 27.17%
3. Safari 12.31%
4. Chrome 6.87%
5. Opera 1.31%

Raw log files are pretty useless for a more accurate reporting because every little junk script on the web trying to access websites or AV program doing prefetch claims to be IE.

These stats mean a page was actually loaded into a browser and javascript was run.

Quite the change from back when MSIE was the clearly dominant browser.

Here's my 2009 data for the same period:

1. Internet Explorer 61.26%
2. Firefox 25.42%
3. Safari 9.82%
4. Opera 1.57%
5. Chrome 1.55%

The 2008 data for the same period:

1. Internet Explorer 68.23%
2. Firefox 21.26%
3. Safari 8.72%
4. Opera 1.23%
5. Mozilla 0.22%

Firefox and Safari have been steadily climbing each year but it appears Chrome took a big dent out of MSIE on my site, with Opera slipping a little but holding pretty steady.

Anyone seeing similar trends?

Please use a javascript tracking system for your results like Google Analytics, not raw log data which is pretty unreliable for this anymore.

[tangor]

I've been seeing the same erosion over time (tracking my stats from 2004 to present). I don't find it all that surprising as IE, for the longest time, was "fixed" in nature and the other browsers were cutting edge... an edge that is where we are now. The Safari number(s) are more intriguing in revealing hardware choices in the consumer market. Just my 2 cents...

[tedster]

Does anyone split out Safari on PC? I'm guessing it's very low, but that's just a guess.

[tangor]

I do... and the percent is vanishingly small. I've been seeing a slow growth in Mac hardware over the years. Not insignificant, but not a world beater.

[ken_b]

From GA for the last 30 days.

Internet Explorer.....71.44%
Firefox..................16.39%
Safari.....................7.08%
Chrome...................2.98%
Mozilla....................0.81%
Opera.....................0.40%

So how much does a site's target audience play into this kind of stat?

[incrediBILL]

So how much does a site's target audience play into this kind of stat?

Topic and audience probably impact quite a bit.

The site I got stats from is global in scope and oriented towards the visual arts.

Traffic sources may also influence browser choice.

My top 10 traffic sources are:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. India
5. Australia
6. Germany
7. Philippines
8. South Africa
9. Italy
10. France

Another interesting statistic is MSIE users tend to click on AdSense more!

1. Internet Explorer 4.79%
2. Firefox 3.69%
3. Safari 3.47%
4. Chrome 3.30%
5. Opera 3.20%

So according to the above stats, my decline in MSIE usage could also be directly related to my decline in AdSense income since MSIE users have a higher CTR!

Just for Ted, my breakdown of Safari:

Safari / Macintosh 10.64%
Safari / iPhone 0.68%
Safari / Windows 0.51%

Pretty funny that the iPhone usage is higher than Windows!

[edited by: incrediBILL at 12:43 am (utc) on Apr 26, 2010]

[tangor]

Another interesting statistic is MSIE users tend to click on AdSense more!

Really dang interesting! Suggests that Average Joe User (out of the box) with brand new computer is a "user/consumer" whereas the techno geeks are gun shy and timid. I'll have to trawl back through my logs/stats to see if that holds true.

[encyclo]

Site 1:

Internet Explorer: 47.80%
Firefox: 40.60%
Chrome: 6.39%
Safari: 5.33%
Opera: 0.08%

Note, the audience is mostly European and female. 2010 is the first time that IE has dropped below 50% - it was at over 90% two years ago, so a huge shift there.

As for AdSense, for this one site IE accounts for 69% of clicks against its 47.8% market share, Firefox accounts for only 19% of clicks for 40.6% of market share. That's a significant difference.

Site 2:

Internet Explorer: 53.01%
Firefox: 25.48%
Safari: 12.90%
Chrome: 7.85%
Opera: 0.54%

For this site, the audience is overwhelmingly north American and male, in contrast to the above. However, the pattern is similar when it comes to AdSense: IE accounts for 70% of clicks against its 53% market share, Firefox accounts for 16% of clicks for 25% of market share.

[lavazza]

So how much does a site's target audience play into this kind of stat?

Looking at stats for three sites (on sports, business and health) that I administer,it seems to be a trend that is happening across the board, with Gecko taking up the slack (Opera seems uniformly out of the running)

IE % shares

[pre]........(S)....(B)....(H)
2006.....70.....69.....73
2008.....47.....48.....46
2010.....40.....44.....44
[/pre]