Webnames.ca Staff
Alexa.com tracks what we are all doing on the web. They rank websites globally based on hits. They also break it down by country. You can get an interesting snapshot of a country through their top 100 websites hit list.
There is something deliciously voyeuristic in comparing and contrasting web viewing habits. Are we all like minded individuals…err countries?
So what are those of us in Canada, the U.S. Australia and the U.K looking at?
In the top 10 we are all the same and dull as dishwater – Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube MySpace, Wikipedia – blah, blah, blah.
In the 10 – 20 range we begin to differentiate ourselves.
The U.S is keen for sports, weather, news, and porn. Canada is banking, news, porn and poker. Good old OZ is banking, news, books and banking again and the U.K wastes company time viewing porn, news, sports and then more porn.
After 40 it seems that you really can’t get a date. Canada is hogging the bandwidth on Plenty of Fish, the free dating website – so we’re cheap as well. Not to be outdone in the cheapskate stakes, the U.S. is keeping the online doors of Walmart and Target open. The UK finally tires of porn and gets back to work by reading the news. Australia sends mixed messages by hitting government websites as well as poker and porn.
What does the 100th most viewed website say about our national identities?
Australia remains its usual friendly self with Hi5.com, a social networking site. The very cool UK listens to Last.fm, the U.S. retains its “frugal” ways by “sharing movies through mininova.org.
And then there is Canada – oh Canada. Canada proudly waves its bilingual flag and sees many of us looking at an inexpensive television/internet box on the French website free.fr. Viva la difference!
Drill down into how the world uses the Internet at www.alexa.com.