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Blog traffic reaches all time high
June 10, 2008
UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all time high last week. As the chart below illustrates, Blogs and Personal Websites accounted for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits.
Taking the slightly longer view and looking at the monthly data, you can see that the market share of blogs has been increasing steadily over the last three years. In fact, UK internet users’ appetite for content in general has been growing. Traffic to News and Media sites has also increased over the same period, and these ‘traditional’ sites still receive more traffic than blogs. However, when you look at growth rates, bloggers are catching up: over the last 3 years UK Internet traffic to out Blogs and Personal Websites category has increased by 208%, compared to 70% for News and Media. Another interesting fact is that the market share of blogs is greater in the UK than the USA: 1.09% and 0.73% respectively in May.
A good example of blogs getting one over on traditional media was the activity surrounding yesterday’s 3G iPhone announcement, when gadget and Apple-related blogs sent more traffic to the iPhone site than the traditional IT media. One of those blogs, Engadget, is included in the list of the 20 most visited Blogs and Personal websites during May.
The top 20 includes a variety of sites, ranging from gadgets to gossip. Blogger is the most popular blogging platform, while the appearance of MySpace Blog in the top 3 highlights the importance of social networking blogs. Traditional media players are also getting in on the act, as illustrated by the presence of the BBC Blog Network and Guardian Unlimited Blogs in the top 10.
The range of content contained on blogs is also illustrated by the number of search terms sending traffic to their way. For the 12 weeks ending June 7th there 518,000 search terms sending traffic to the Blogs and Personal Websites, with the highest ranked term (‘club penguin cheats’) accounting for just 0.39% of traffic.
Image search is also extremely important for blogs. After Google UK, Google UK Image Search was second largest individual source of traffic to sector in May, accounting for 6.24% of all upstream traffic. Looking at it from the other direction, the figures are even starker: 7.85% of all downstream traffic from Google UK Image Search went to blogs, making the category the second largest destination of image search traffic after Social Networks and Forums.
Update: Top 10 British blogs (16 June 08)
Following some feedback in the comments section below, I have created a list of the top 10 British blogs in the UK during May 2008. I’ve included both the blog networks of traditional media players (BBC, Guardian, Times, Telegraph and the News of the World) and UK versions of US blogs – e.g. Gizmodo UK. Political blogger Guido Fawkes is the highest ranked independent UK blog on the list, and I promise that’s not just because he was one of the people requesting it!
Posted by Robin Goad at 12:30 PM
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In Categories Blogs | Gadgets | Google | News and Media | Politics | Search
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Comments
You may well be right... We'll actually be posting about this tomorrow, so keep and eye on the blog!
Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 10, 2008 02:41 PM
What's Euro 2008! Bah!
Robin
I'm surprised not to see Shiny Media in there.
Could you set up a category for individual blogs rather than networks? I'm interested in the comparison between newspaper sites which use the ABCe process (in one of its varieties) and independent blogs? It may be that the individual blogs would be off your radar as too small. What is your minimum figure for a meaningful emeasurement?
My suspicion is that individual bloggers - who mainly use hosted services such as Sitemeter, are underestinating their traffic substantially. In my own case the variation in Unique Users can be >50% between my hosted counter and the numbers from the logs using the ABCe qualified tools and filtering. Obviously I haven't pavid £3k for a real audit.
Rgds
Matt
Posted by Matt Wardman | June 10, 2008 04:18 PM
thats a very good information about blogs mate...but what matt said was right. try to give it a thought!
Posted by Automotive Web Design | June 11, 2008 12:16 PM
Hi Matt - thanks for the comment.
With so many blogs out there, many do indeed fall off the radar, although their traffic would be included in the overal figures for their hosting services such as Blogger, LiveJournal, etc. However, if any of the blogs hosted by these services do recieve a significant amount of traffic, we would seperate them out and give them their own entry.
Here is a list of the top indivdiual blogs during May, from which I've excluded both the blogging platforms and mainstream news sites that aggregate multiple blogs, such as BBC Blog Networks and Guardian Blogs, etc.
1. Mashable - www.mashable.com (1.25%)
2. PerezHilton - www.perezhilton.com (1.22%)
3. Engadget - www.engadget.com (0.89)%
4. Releaselog - www.rlslog.net (0.62)%
5. I Can Has Cheezburger? - www.icanhascheezburger.com (0.58%)
6. Xkcd.com - www.xkcd.com (0.55%)
7. Lifehacker - www.lifehacker.com (0.50%)
8. Consumerist - www.consumerist.com (0.43%)
9. Explosm.net - www.explosm.net (0.40%)
10. Just Jared - www.justjared.com (0.38%)
11. Joystiq - www.joystiq.com (0.34%)
12. Gizmodo - www.gizmodo.com (0.33%)
13. Official Google Blog - www.google.com/googleblog (0.33%)
14. Elias Saba's Blog - blog.esaba.com (0.31%)
15. TechCrunch - www.techcrunch.com (0.30%)
16. Cucirca.com - www.cucirca.com (0.27%)
17. Evil Beet Gossip - evilbeetgossip.film.com (0.27%)
18. Boing Boing - www.boingboing.net (0.26%)
19. Ask MetaFilter - ask.metafilter.com (0.26%)
20. The Hype Machine - www.hypem.com (0.26%)
Based on these criteria, Shiny Media ranked at number 55 in May.
Of course this list is somewhat different from Technorati's, but bear in mind that it measures things in 2 different ways. Firstly, this list is based on UK traffic only, whereas Technorati's is global. Second, we are measuing total visits, whereas Technorati's index is based on 'authority', which measures the number of other blogs linking to that blog during the last six months.
I hope that makes sense! Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 11, 2008 03:37 PM
Any thoughts as to the why of this increase? is it solely because internet usage is increasing? is it part of a trend towards peer-to-peer networking? blogs getting regognised as valuable (perhaps mainstream) sources of information?
Linde
Posted by Linde | June 11, 2008 04:54 PM
I am not suprised with the stats above. We have seen our blog websites climb the rankings recently, meaning many more hits :-)
Wayne
Posted by Wayne Moussalli | June 12, 2008 01:12 PM
Hi Linde - thanks for the comment.
The data is based in market share of all UK Internet visits, so already takes into account the increasing popularity of the web. In other words, traffic to blogs is growign at a faster rate than UK internet usage in general.
Hope that makes sense, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 12, 2008 04:40 PM
Thanks for the comment, Guido. I've updated the post to include a list of the top 10 UK-based blogs during May. You'll be happy to see that you're the number one independent British blogger!
Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 16, 2008 08:43 AM
Great update and you explained it very well.The information you have given is very much useful to choose a good directory submission.Thanks.
Posted by online wealth | June 17, 2008 06:58 AM
Well how about that. I started blogging in December 2006 and the trend has been ever upwards since. Coincidence? ;)
Posted by a very public sociologist | June 17, 2008 07:19 PM
Revisiting this after a few days, the blog share is not that far away from overtaking print news and media websites (you quoted 1.48% in Jan 2008).
Should be fun.
Posted by Matt Wardman | June 18, 2008 12:07 AM
That's an interesting way of looking at it, Matt. However, blogs are not quite there yet! last week (w/e 14th June), Blogs accounted for 1.20% of all UK Internet visits, while News and Media - Print was 1.95%.
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 18, 2008 06:25 AM
It's interesting but misleading as you don't have all blogs registered in the UK do you and yet you like to bang on about "UK Traffic"? You surely need to have a definitive list first? I should register mine with Hitwise, our raw site log tells us we would be third on your UK list and correspondingly the market share of the blogs you do have listed will fall slightly! If every other leading UK blog as listed in something like Technorati does that I suspect you will have radically different ratings.
Posted by James | June 19, 2008 02:39 AM
Hi James - thanks for the comment.
Hitwise is different from Technorati in 2 ways: we track visits to a blog rather than links, and - in this case at least - we are looking only at UK rather than global traffic.
We collect our data directly from ISPs and are therefore (anonymously and in aggregate form) tracking what 8.43 million people are doing online every week. We see traffic to 10 million individual sites each week, and individually categorize all that reach above certain threshold of traffic.
If you provide me with your blog's URL, I'd be happy to look into how it ranks within our system.
Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | June 19, 2008 10:18 AM
I'm not surprised at these figures. We are fed a Pravda-like diet of "News" from the biased BBC and mainstream media. You can get a real idea of what others are thinking on the blogs. Watch out for Government and EU legislation to censor this last bastion of free speech.
Posted by Simon | June 20, 2008 05:54 PM
Interesting stats which back up what's been happening in the U.S. etc as well.
I would debate Blogger as the most popular blogging platform, simply because the self-hosted version of Wordpress is incredibly popular - not sure it would topple Blogger, but it would be a lot closer.
Also, it would be good to know how you're defining UK blogs - hosted in the UK, or written by someone in the UK? Or written by a British blogger abroad?
Posted by Dan Thornton | June 23, 2008 08:43 AM
Dan - UK sites in this context are sites either hosted in the UK or hosted abroad and aimed at a UK audience.
Posted by Robin Goad | June 24, 2008 02:50 PM
Hi,
Great stats you have there. I just wonder if you could advise me with the blog stats for the world. Been trying to google it but failed..
Cheers,
Posted by Azlan | July 12, 2008 10:58 PM
Hi Azlan - Hitwise can provide data for the UK, USA, Australia and a number of other markets, but we don't have a global number I'm afraid.
You could try Technorati, which provides global numbers. However, it's methodology is based on the number of inbound links a blog receives ('authority') rather than counting actual number of visits / hits.
Here's a link to the Technorati top 10: http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | July 15, 2008 11:53 AM
Hello,
Thanks for such a nice peice of information. I was wondering if you had any information about the complete market share of the blogs in the world and also country wise.
Would appreciate if you can help me with the above information.
Thanks,
Posted by Website Design | July 21, 2008 11:02 AM
Probably all searching for information on the Euro 2008 ... ;-)
Posted by Jojo | June 10, 2008 02:15 PM