Latest Stats as at 2/5/2009.
These figures cover the 15-day period 16/4/2009 to 30/4/2009.

Previous figures are in brackets and each figure spans half a month.  

Vista Market Share
==================

For period 16th to 30th April 2009, figures based on visits:-

XP 64.0 (was 64.5, 64.1, 67.3, 66.2, 65.3, 64.1, 64.7)
Vista 22.8 (was 22.1, 20.4, 21.1, 21.1, 20.4, 20.9, 22.0)
Other Windows 3.5 (was 3.7, 5.5, 3.5, 3.6, 4.3, 4.9, 3.3)
Mac 7.1 (was 7.2, 7.4, 5.9,  6.7, 7.8, 7.9, 7.7)
Linux 1.2 (was 1.0, 1.2, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.0, 1.2) 
Others 1.4 (was 1.5, 1.5, 1.4, 1.5, 1.2, 1.2, 1.1)

These figures are for "humans" only. 

Mobile phones (including iPhones) and various gadgets 
are in the Others category.  

The Vista figure is the highest ever recorded.
 
Browser Breakup
===============

Percentages of visits for the period 16th to 30th April 2009.

IE 63.2 (was 63.9, 66.5, 68.6, 67.0, 67.0, 66.2, 66.0)
FF 26.4 (was 25.7, 24.1, 23.1, 24.0, 22.8, 24.2, 24.5)  
Safari 5.5 (was 5.9, 5.4, 4.7, 5.2, 5.9, 6.1, 5.8)
Chrome 1.8 (was 1.6, 1.2, 1.0, 1.3, 1.2, 1.1, 1,4)
Opera 1.5 (was 1.3, 1.1, 1.0, 0.9, 1.3, 1.1, 0.9)
All Others 1.5 (was 1.6, 1.6, 1.5, 1.5, 1.8, 1.3, 1.4)

Here we see the highest figures ever recorded for Firefox, 
Chrome and Opera and the lowest ever for IE.

The figures for Safari include Safari on the iPhone, and the Opera 
results include Opera Mini on mobiles. 

Search Engines Share
==================== 

Percentage breakup of visits coming via search engines 
for April 16th to 30th 2009:-

Google 85.6 (was 87.3, 86.3, 86.8, 85.4, 85.8, 85.5, 82.8)
Yahoo 7.8 (was 6.7, 6.3, 7.1, 8.0, 7.8, 8.0, 10.1)
Microsoft 2.8 (was 2.4, 2.9, 2.3, 2.5, 2.3, 2.3, 2.6)
All others 3.8 (was 3.6, 4.5, 3.8, 4.1, 4.2, 4.1, 4.5)

Google is down a little from last month. Yahoo and Microsoft are 
up; their combined share is over 10% again.

The "all others" category appears to be declining, 
leaving only the big three search engines, but actually it 
was around 3.7% a year ago. 

Countries Analysis
==================

I have produced a first cut of a countries analysis. 

There are a bit under 250 countries in the world, including 
many small islands (3000 people live on the Faulklands) 
and protectorates and the Antarctic.  

Initial tests covered 89 countries, but with a larger sample, 
it's 143 countries plus those using satellite providers.
Nearly all overseas visitors have their computer set to US-English. 

As you would expect, the top three are USA, Australia and UK 
for visitors to my web sites, followed by Canada, New Zealand 
and the larger countries in Western Europe.  Then follow many 
Asian countries plus Brazil.  The place is not exactly teeming 
with hits from Brunei, Ethiopia or Guatemala. 

I am working on a scheme to combine the smaller countries into 
regional groups.  In the long term, country analysis tends to be 
the same month after month, and trends may take years to emerge.
It gets repetitive and boring unless you are a geographer.

On a lighter note, the initial sample included some classics.
There were 38 visits from Poland.  Actually it was 38 views 
of a pregnant smoker on the steps of a London hospital.
She had been posted onto a Polish chat forum by someone 
who had found her on the non-smokers web site.

There were 17 visits from Egypt which seemed excessive. 
It turned out that some poster on a learn-english web site had 
used a tiny pic lifted from the Bondi Beach home page 
as his little icon.  No real visits.

A few weeks ago there was a much worse case which swamped 
everything.  A discussion about rules for managing your pets 
started on a very geeky-nerdy American chat forum.  Someone 
suggested dogs should not be allowed to smoke tobacco, 
and linked to a piccy of a dog puffing away on the non-smokers 
web page.  Would you believe 8000 people looked at that pic 
in three days, including 390 in the first six minutes 
and another 1300 in the following hour.

http://www.nsma.org.au/pics2006/dogpuff.jpg

There have been about 130 visits from the "sub-continent".
India and Pakistan are both over-represented with what 
appear to be real searches usually via Google India.  
Even "Bundi Beach" (presumably said in an Indian accent) is 
correctly handled by Google.  I suspect our tourist people 
are running a "Visit Australia" campaign.  

Or perhaps it's those workers in Telemarketing Centres studying 
up so they can pretend they are really in North Sydney. 
The trick is to tell them it's raining heavily there, 
or ask about the dreadful floods North Sydney has been having.

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