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):

• TNS Global (India offices) - 7:01
• Bates White - 6:16
• CMI Research - 3:46
• Millward Brown - 2:29
• Morgan Keegan - 2:24

I would like to thank these five companies for taking a bit more time to read my thoughts and findings on Inside Market Research!

Restaurants on the Web - Part 2 of 3

Hamburger Hank's is a clean, presumably friendly burger joint found in Fountain Valley, California. If you search Google for the words "Hamburger Hank's" (in quotation marks), you get only 14 pages returned. So, this is clearly no Wendy's or Burger King mega-chain.

A page from Pubcrawler.com is the first result, and nobody on that site has bothered to review the restaurant. Just a bit lower in the results, we see our very own blog, thanks to our most recent post mentioning that we'd be talking soon about Hamburger Hank's.

There's another link not far down that mentions Hamburger Hank's merely because it's an establishment where you can pick up a copy of the Huntington Beach Wave weekly newspaper.

Clearly, this hamburger emporium has made little effort to establish a "brand identity" for itself on the Internet.

Suppose someone wanted to at least see if anyone had ever taken a picture of the hamburgers (or the front door, or the cashiers, or the parking lot) at Hamburger Hank's. You know, just to get a better "feel" for the place. Then they might look up "Hamburger Hank's" with the Google Images search.

I'm not sure the ownership of Hamburger Hank's would be pleased with how their restaurant is being presented in visual form online. The array of four photos that come back does not particularly evoke an establishment where I'll enjoy a delicious hamburger.


Nor do these images inspire me to place Hamburger Hank's toward the top of my gastronomical "to do" list. She doesn't look like a particularly cheerful cheeseburger chomper, does she?


Companies sometimes spend 10% of their revenues on advertising and marketing, so that a consistently positive image of the corporate entity is firmly imprinted in the target market's mind. It doesn't look like Hamburger Hank's is spending one-tenth of 1% of their revenues on advertising and marketing. At least not on the Internet.

I'd be interested in hearing comments from restaurant owners here. Would you be satisfied with the web presence of Hamburger Hank's, if it were your own establishment?

This has been Part 2 of a 3-part series:
Part 1 – Restaurants on the web
Part 3 – Can a wiki directory change the web landscape for an unpublicized restaurant? (Still haven't completed this part, but the attempt to build data was made here.)

Restaurants on the Web – Part 1 of 3

I love good food. Bestowed with a metabolism that allows me to eat until full, three meals a day without blimping out, I consider it a true blessing.

So, with that in mind, I tend to hold in high value the restaurant industry, though I wouldn’t know the first thing about managing a restaurant. I probably know a bit more about Internet marketing, though; and that's going to be the topic of discussion in this post. Specifically, why do some restaurants fail to market themselves on the Internet?

CASE STUDY: The Georgia House Restaurant

My in-laws live in Lower Delaware. This affords me the opportunity to visit Sussex County every 4 or 5 weekends, and that thrills me because I never miss the chance to have a dinner at The Georgia House in Millsboro, DE. It's my favorite restaurant in Delaware. There isn’t a fancy thing in the dining room or the kitchen -- it is simply unadulterated Southern-style and Chesapeake regional "family food". You can sample a catfish po'boy sandwich, Memphis BBQ ribs, Miss Vicky's meatloaf, prime rib (try the Cajun-spiced version!), or my trusted go-to dish, the buttermilk fried chicken. Chicken is the area's primary agronomic business, so of course Georgia House has to know how to prepare it well. Whatever you do, don't miss the "soup that made them famous", a cream of crab concoction that you'll regret having ordered only a cup. Upgrade one of your two side dishes to the classic green salad, and you've got your fiber for the night. Finish off with another salad, the Eastern Shore picnic favorite Jell-o pretzel salad.

Sounds like a perfect restaurant, huh? But it has no website. Why, then, doesn't co-owner Sean Hall publish a website about his Millsboro restaurant and its several satellite locations in Selbyville, Milford, Laurel, and Georgetown (take-out counter only)? I can't figure that out, and Sean was unavailable for my call. Just a couple of years ago, people would pack the place and wait 45 minutes for the next available table, but now business has dropped off to a relatively slower "at capacity" pace. I have to imagine there are tourists traveling to the area who have never heard of the Georgia House, or may have been referred to it only by name but would like to see the menu before trying. Most of the clientele is over the age of 50, so maybe Sean doesn't think this market avails itself of the Internet. Think again, though -- seniors constitute the fastest-growing Internet demographic. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, those age 50 and over experienced a 26% growth rate in home broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008, with half of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 having broadband now. Some 19% of those 65 and older had home broadband access as of April 2008.

Consider the following possible web searches a hungry diner might conduct. For the tourist who has never heard of Georgia House, but happens to be rambling through Millsboro and has a craving for the regional favorite soup, they might go to Yahoo! on their mobile web browser and type 'millsboro delaware crab soup'. Here's their search result:



In the top 9 results, there's not one hit for the Georgia House, despite it being founded in Millsboro and famous for its cream of crab soup. Is it just me? Wouldn't that be maddening if you were the owner of this restaurant?

On the other hand, consider the diner who may have had a local resident advise them, "You should go to the Georgia House in Millsboro," but they’d like to see the menu, evaluate prices, get directions, and perhaps confirm whether the establishment accepts Discover card. Their Google search might be constructed as '"Georgia House" Delaware menu map'.

In the top 9 results, four of the links do contain info about the Georgia House restaurant, but these specific links are not particularly helpful or flattering to the business.



I don’t understand why the Georgia House would settle for these various pages representing (or, failing to represent) their establishment on the Internet. Maybe some of my readers will have some thoughts why.

Editor's note: As of September 2009, the Georgia House finally established its own web site.

Later in this 3-part series:
Part 2 – The imagery of Hamburger Hank's
Part 3 – Can a wiki directory change the web landscape for an unpublicized restaurant? (Still haven't completed this part, but the attempt to build data was made here.)

Internet users per household

I'm looking for data that would help estimate the number of Internet users per household (or, rather, "per Internet-connected household") in the United States.

If you perform a web search for "Internet users per household", you get a bunch of sites -- all of which are addressing this question in a country other than the United States.

Isn't this the sort of information our government should track in some way? There's a bill that wants to mandate a study of applying net neutrality regulations to high-speed Internet access services, but we don't know how to count Internet users per household.

Somebody help me!