Archive for March, 2009

Measuring apects of real world behaviour often reveals correlations between different variables.  Correlations indicate the strength and direction of the relationship.  For instance, there may be a correlation between the length of the page and time spent on a site. However, it is important to remember when looking at correlations that they do not prove one variable is responsible for another.  One may cause the other, the other way round or they may both be affected by a third factor.  In the case of page length and time on site, users may be spending longer on the site as there is more to read or because it is harder to find what they are looking for.  It may also be that sites with longer pages have something else in common that mean users spend more time, such as more related content to which users can be directed.

Well for one day,  according to TG Daily reporting satistics provided by Net Applications Safari is listed with a 10.91% share of the browser market on 28 February 2009.  This seems to be due to rapid uptake of the new beta version of Safari which is estimated to have been downloaded 11 million times over four days.

It is important to be careful when reviewing this type of browser statistics as there is generally some sampling bias as figures are collected from sites using their products.  However, it does highlight the importance of Safari.

Net Applications figures for the month put Safari’s market share at 7% overall which is a significant number of people even discounting the latest boost from the beta.  However, it should be noted that their figures place the market share of the mac operating system at nearly 10%.  This suggests that mac users may be more likely than microsoft users to switch from the browser packaged with the operating system to firefox or another browser.

Analysis: Safari 4 lifts Apple above 10% browser market share

Browser Market Share