Stats > Browser Stats
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This page presents web browser statistics that may be of interest to website designers.
Caution : stats mislead.
Caching distorts raw data;
audiences vary for each site;
methodologies vary for each survey;
surveys miss or omit important details;
surveys mis-identify browsers or other user agents;
some search spiders pose as browsers;
small sample sizes exaggerate fluctuations;
and stats don’t count those who stay away because their browsers are not supported.
[more...]
[more...]
Caution : browser stats may help you decide when a browser is so uncommon that a site need not support people who use it;
and the stats may satisfy the curious; but the stats are useful for little else.
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please: facts are stubborn,
but statistics are more pliable” — Mark Twain
~
[more stats quotes...]
The table Browser Usage Stats (see above) lists stats from several sources, showing how much stats can vary:
- Source 1 stats are from EWS. Percentages reported by EWS miscount KHTML- and Gecko-based browsers: but a userAgent list is reported from which I can compute KHTML and Gecko stats. Note also that EWS counts hosts rather than page accesses, which are not strictly comparable.
- Source 2 stats are from Net Applications’ Market Share.
- Source 3 stats are from the Pitt County, North Carolina website.
- Source 4 stats are from a USGS server. Users are mainly from the US, many from government and educational institutions. Note: recent IE5.01 percentages are anomalously very high, suggesting that the IE5 percentage is too high and therefore the other percentages too low.
- Source 5 stats are from sites that use a hit counter.
- Source 6 stats are from this domain. Because of its special audience, its stats apply to a narrow segment of the population.
Note: Netscape 8 presents a unique challenge, inasmuch as it can use either the Gecko browser engine or the IE browser engine; stats sources may report Netscape 8, but not report how much each engine is used; or stats sources may report no Netscape 8 stats, but instead identify Netscape 8 as an IE or Gecko browser, depending on how much each engine is used. The latter data are more useful. Very few use Netscape 8, however, so this issue has little effect on the Gecko and IE stats.
The best stats for a site are the stats gathered for that particular site: and even these are skewed by caching and faulty browser-detection. For example, consider Kerry Watson’s Browser Statistics page: this page uses three different hit counters whose reports should be comparable; but they are not, in part because of faulty browser detection.
Bottom line: use statistics with extreme caution.