Loading ...Where are you spending your time online, other than, of course, with us? A recent Ipsos OTX study of 18,503 online respondents worldwide shows about three-fourths of all of us spend the most time with our search engines.
Yes, Google is rolling in dough because, quite frankly, the world can’t live without them and their buddies Bing, Yahoo and others. You most likely wouldn’t be reading this blog if search engines didn’t exist.
Belgium, Norway and South Africa use search engines more than any other countries in the world. About 85 percent of Internet users in these three countries sign on to Google and their pals on a regular basis. The only thread I see between the three is perhaps a love for finding new waffle recipes.
Over 80 percent of online users in Turkey, Australia, Germany, Great Britain and Poland also are search engine aficionados. Just slightly less excited about search engines are Sweden, Argentina, Canada, France, Italy, Spain and South Korea, all above 70 percent use.
Social networks, you may have guessed, are second only to search engines. Almost two-third of global netizens spend time with their favorite social networks. Portals, not so much. Only 55 percent of global Internet users say they use a portal like Yahoo once a week or more often.
Other types of sites don’t fare as well. For example, only 44 percent spend time on user-generated or upload sites like YouTube. News and information sites get 42 percent of all traffic and shopping sites like Amazon snag another 26 percent.
Things get even worse for auction sites like eBay, which receives less than 25 percent of the world’s eyeballs. Classified ad sites - think craigslist - check in at 21 percent.
What about blogs like AVA? I’m personally hurt that only 19 percent of the world reads blogs. Thankfully, 100 percent of you are currently reading this blog.
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