MrExcel.com visitors by Country

[MrExcel]

I was checking out some statistics provided by Google Analytics. The graph at this page shows the top 20 countries for the first six months of the year.

http://www.mrexcel.com/weblog/2008/07/mrexcel-community-by-country.shtml

Do you have any subjective comments about if this data feels correct? I somewhat question if Google can be accurate with this statistic. If they can't tell, do they simply add it to the U.S.? I have other reasons to be skeptical - the numbers might fluctuate wildly from one week to the next, even though I am looking at allegedly the same time period.

This tracks the number of visits. If you come to MrExcel.com, click around 20 pages and then leave, this is a single visit. The total visits for the time period was about 5 million.

Bill

 

[Tom Urtis]

Just my opinion, but this seems generally commensurate with similar comparisons of internet users, or Excel or Word users, per country, in raw numbers.

What I think would be a meaningful analysis is a weighted factor of per country capita to gain perspective of these visits by country population.

Just thinking out loud, maybe dividing a country's raw number of visits into the respective country's total population (or over a basic Excel-comprehendable age, say age 10) might give a better indication of representation, and smooth out that bar chart. That way, a country like the United States would not have such a large bias advantage going into the survey because it is populated by several times more people than most other industrialized countries.

And maybe further, or alternatively, divided into the number of households and/or employees at businesses that have internet access...that might give an even better comparison of Excel interest by country.

Of course it would take resources (which MSFT has) to commission such a survey, maybe it will never happen but it'd sure be interesting to see the results.

 

[starl]

What is google actually tracking? People who search google and follow the link to the board? If that's the case - then all our users who come here directly wouldn't get counted.

 

[Greg Truby]

I agree with what Tom said.

Also, ¿donde están los mexicanos? Spain shows up on the radar, but not Mexico? Seems odd to me. While we do get some Spaniards from time to time, I meet more Mexicans in the Other Languages forum than I meet Spaniards (when the members show their flag at all).

 

[Tom Urtis]

What is google actually tracking? People who search google and follow the link to the board? If that's the case - then all our users who come here directly wouldn't get counted.

That is an excellent point. Further example, Russia is making a lot of noise with its Yandex search engine for which they are prepping a $2 billion IPO, and to eastern Europeans that is their Google (in fact, full Google access is hampered in China). The point is, with search engines leading to this or any site through communist country oversight, all bets are off for the reported accuracy of those countries' numbers.

 

[sailepaty]

I know for sure that frequently they are Argentineans, Colombians, Mexicans, etc. visitors. The thinks is, that most of them already have Mr. Excel in their favorites or they are refered to here from Spanish forums.

Saludos
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[TinaP]

I always thought it would be fun if we had a map that all the Mr Excel visitors could put a pin in for their location. It wouldn't be fully accurate as it would require the visitors to actively participate, but the truly "active" members of the community would participate.

That said, I don't have the knowledge to do it myself so I'd be impressed by anyone who could.

 

[Greg Truby]

I always thought it would be fun if we had a map that all the Mr Excel visitors could put a pin in for their location.

Kristy (Von Pookie) did that <S>a year or two</S> three years<SUP>1</SUP> ago. Some sort of feature on Google maps. But I think it expired or something?


<HR>1. Thanks Matt

 

[Oaktree]

We used to have one, Tina... but, it looks like it's deactivated now.

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=156503

 

[MrExcel]

Great question about Mexico... they show up as #21, with about 75% as many visits as Spain.

Google tracks statistics from the Google ads. I think they are trying to show a new ad each time, so they assume that requests from the same I.P. within n minutes are the same person visiting a new page. So - this is theoretically tracking the pages with the Google ads: the home page, the forum, and a few other pages.

They are able to accurately profile the popularity of the days of the week: the most activity on Weds, the least on the weekend. Those numbers seem correct. The geographic numbers don't quite feel right, though.

A map would be cool.

How about this data, which seems even more unusual. The top 10 cities from which our community surfs to MrExcel, according to Google, based on the first 6 months of 2008.
# 1 London 247K visits
# 2 Unknown City 138K visits
#3 New York 121K visits
#4 Sydney 78K
#5 Melbourne 49K
#6 Singapore 45K
#7 Houston 37K
#8 Chicago 34K
#9 Bangalore 34K
#10 Wembley 29K

I guess the question is what do they define as London? If this reaches out to Southampton then you could be picking up many towns in between. Again, I am not sure how they could do this with any accuracy. But...interesting stats.

Bill