About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.

Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

Analyst Weblog

« The Last Olympic Post - Part Two | Turnbull vs. Nelson – The answer was in the data! »

Is Chrome the New Colour of the Web?

September 05, 2008

There's plenty of activity around the blogosphere, in the newspapers and in the office with people loading the new Google Chrome browser, making their own comparisons, and adding their opinions.

Two days after its release on September 3 the initial frenzy died down across most markets – Singapore being the exception but I'll address that in a moment.

Australian and New Zealand Internet users jumped on to the new browser straight away with market share of traffic to Google Chrome twice to three times what we saw on the first day in the UK(1.52%) and US (1.6%). See Robin's post from the UK and Heather's report from the USA.

Hong Kong traffic to Google Chrome was more in line with the UK and the US, while in Singapore traffic became visible on September 2 and then jumped dramatically on the official launch day – accounting for the dramatic difference in the chart below (at time of writing Singapore share for September 4th were not available).

In the Australian and New Zealand markets the dominant software website was Microsoft (www.microsoft.com), considering their broad range of product it does not constitute a clear comparison, and the other constant is Mozilla with their Firefox browser.

In Hong Kong and Singapore, Foxy (www.gofoxy.net) and Google Desktop Search (desktop.google.com) were the leading software websites respectively.

Australia – Day One

New Zealand – Day One

Hong Kong – Day One

Singapore – Day Two

Google Chrome also had the added effect of moving the Google Software Downloads website up the traffic rankings in each market, so Google is likely to benefit from the 'halo' effect if you like, whether it is a lasting effect, time will tell. The table below indicates the market share rankings jump for Google Software Downloads, from the day prior to Google Chrome launch on September 3.

Not surprisingly 65%-75% of all traffic to the Google Chrome website was delivered by Google properties, with social networks and news titles being the other prominent drivers in each market.

Australia – Upstream Sites to Google Chrome

New Zealand – Upstream Sites to Google Chrome

Hong Kong – Upstream Sites to Google Chrome

Singapore – Upstream Sites to Google Chrome

The day one average time spent on the Google Chrome website, indicates that visitors from Singapore were more likely to view the cartoon product description, while Hong Kong visitors were least likely to spend more time than necessary. Whether there is a correlation in the conversion between visits, time spent and downloads would be fascinating, but something we're unlikely to see.

Australia 3 min, 1 sec
New Zealand 2 min, 10 sec
Hong Kong 1 min, 37 sec
Singapore 5 min, 8 sec

We'll provide more data as it becomes available so keep and eye on the blog and our Twitter feed.

Posted by Alan Long at 08:41 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Google | Search