Saturday, June 04, 2011


Who's reading Inside Market Research?

Last month, we passed the sixth "candy or iron" anniversary of Inside Market Research without much fanfare. While the blog was launched in May 2005, it wasn't until April 2006 that the Google Analytics monitoring widget was installed. I'm a big fan of Google Analytics and other web traffic tools (like StatCounter). These tools allow a publisher to learn more -- often times much more -- about who is visiting the website and how they're using it.

For the 5-year history of the Analytics-enabled blog, it looks like we've had over 37,600 visits, with about 1.25 pages being opened per visit. Visitors spend about 49 seconds on the site, on average. As I've always known, my article that compares churn rates is by far the most popular of my pages, accounting for almost 30% of all the page views. The next-most visited page is an article about sample sizes, garnering about 9% of page views.

However, if you drill down more carefully into the data, I think you can make some other interesting discoveries. For this task, I decided to take only the most recent 24 months of traffic data, so that the findings suggest more current trends and distributions.

For example, can we estimate the market share of various Internet Service Providers based on the U.S.-based traffic to my blog? The traffic statistics would suggest so:
  • Comcast - 27%
  • RoadRunner (Time Warner) - 15%
  • Verizon - 10%
  • SBC Global /BellSouth / PacBell (AT&T) - 10%
  • Cox - 5%
  • Charter - 4%
  • Optimum Online (Cablevision) - 4%
  • Comcast Business Class - 3%
  • Qwest - 3%
  • Verizon Wireless - 1%
  • Cogentco - 1%
  • XO - 1%
  • All others & unknown - 16%
That strikes me as probably fairly accurate, and it seems to line up rather closely with other independent measures. The Comcast share is likely inflated somewhat, since I publish from a local Comcast area, and I am also a Comcast employee.

Using the same methodology, we might learn that in Australia, BigPond Broadband and TPG Internet are neck-and-neck for top spot in ISP market share. Or that India's leading ISP is Airtel Broadband, followed by Tata Indicom (VSNL). In the UK, it's British Telecom with about a 30% lead on Virgin Media, which itself has about a 30% lead on BE Internet.

But you can get even nosier about your visitors. For instance, I looked at all of the web domains that had at least 5 unique visits to my blog over the past two years. The domain that seemed to be most interested in my content was the office of Bnei Moran Productions in Israel, spending an average of nearly 10 minutes per visit on my site. Within the United States, the honor of "most interested in my blog" goes to Health Care Service Corporation, clocking in at 7:41 per visit.

Since my blog is about market research, it's interesting to note that some market research and similar consulting firms spend a bit of time reading my commentary. In order of depth of interest (as measured by time per site visit):
I would like to thank these five companies for taking a bit more time to read my thoughts and findings on Inside Market Research!

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10 Comments:

At 3:51 PM, June 04, 2011, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The problem with google analytics and such these days is that more and more people use cloaking software like ghostery.

OTOH, I've "known" you for well over a year now, and your facebook post today was the first I'd heard of this blog.

-Johnny, your farmer friend.

 
At 5:44 PM, July 08, 2011, Anonymous Columbus Ad Pro said...

thanks for the analysis that goes beyond the simple review of analytics. Appreciate your thinking!

 
At 2:07 AM, September 28, 2011, Anonymous market research reports said...

Very informative thanks for sharing.

 
At 3:14 PM, June 02, 2012, Anonymous Cuscuta Research said...

Thanks for putting your efforts in explaining this. This could have been analyzed more with few examples.

 
At 8:19 AM, July 18, 2012, Anonymous Wade said...

I am hooked on G analytics. The trick with it though is that you have really pay attention to it and use it to test new keywords, pages, etc. You can get allot of value from it once you really learn what it can do.

 
At 6:52 AM, January 16, 2013, Anonymous Steve Hodgekinson said...

I always enjoy reading other peoples results from analytics. One thing I find quite interesting at the moment is seeing the devices used to access the pages. After Christmas you can what presents a lot of people got, our site has had more hits from an ipad in the 16 days of January than December and November!

 
At 6:14 AM, February 04, 2013, Blogger Nicks said...

Bcc researchI am new to your blog and just spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes reading. I think I will frequently visit your blog from now on. I will definitely learn a lot from them.

 
At 7:54 AM, February 26, 2013, Blogger BCC Research said...

Market research reportI found your blog perfect for my needs. It contains wonderful and helpful posts. I have read most of them and learned a lot from them. You are doing some great work. Thank you for making such a nice website.

 
At 4:51 AM, April 29, 2013, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Gregory,
I have found your blog about market research, which I really like it. Enjoyed to read your posts and useful tips, how we gain more information from analytics. Hope, you will continue it.
I was wondering if you would be interested in sharing your posts and ideas on Glipho? It's a quite new social publishing platform for bloggers, where you can connect to every social network accounts.

 
At 4:30 AM, February 07, 2014, Blogger Unknown said...

In my opinion, the most visited pages are the earnings of the company, as an example read more analysis of companies. According to these data, I conducted an internal analysis for my work.

 

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