Over the last couple of years, I have looked at statistics relating to which browsers people are using to visit my site a couple of times, in a somewhat adhoc fashion – here and here.
Boring? Maybe.
It is however ‘interesting’ and ‘useful’ in a couple of ways.
While theoretically all web browsers should show the same page in the same way as each other, in reality this just doesn’t happen. How a page looks in Internet Explorer, might differ slightly from how it looks in Google Chrome.
The difference may be enough to “break” a page.
For a web developer, this can be frustrating as sometimes you have to code your pages to adjust themselves to suit the browser being used by a visitor. While I would not strictly call myself a web developer, I’ve had a presence on the web since 1994, and do enjoy tinkering with new ways to do things – so it is useful to know what people are using.
Browser statistics are also interesting in a broadly intellectual way – exactly what browsers are people using? Which is the most popular?
From this year, I’ve decided to post the browser statistics for all visits to my site over a 12 month period – so early each January, I have decided to do this, and perhaps we’ll see trends over time.
For 2013, Google Chrome was the winner with 28.9% of all hits made to this website in 2013 coming from users with that browser:
Even if we add the 5.6% of hits where the browser was not able to be determined to the next placed browser – (Mozilla Firefox on 21.3%) – it still doesn’t beat Google Chrome.
Given my site posts are mainly technology related, that Chrome and Firefox account for nearly half of all visits is not a surprise, as these are widely recognised as the favourite browsers of the technology-inclined.
The non-technically minded tend to stick with Internet Explorer, as that’s what is on their computers – (for the most part) – when they get them, and they don’t tend to change to another browser.
Given Internet Explorer has seen numbers as high as a 65% share of hits on this site as ‘recently’ as 2009, it is remarkable the inroads that Chrome and Firefox have made in the last five years, with Internet Explorer now trailing out with only 16.3% of the total hits recorded.
Of course, given the technology-based theme of my site, the stats are likely to skew away from Internet Explorer – but the comparisons year-to-year are still interesting.
I’ll see you in 2014 to see how the coming 12 months pan out.