JNIR 2009

The latest JNIR arrived showing the web audiences of the participating websites. It shows that, out of the websites surveyed, Yahoo was the highest placed.

At least the JNIR (whilst not perfect) does go some way to try and get some demographic data into the area of Irish Internet Search. Google’s Ad Planner data have possibly a more accurate picture of the top websites. Oddly enough (!) they are all too modest to reveal their own figures in their own data, but it still gives you an indication of the volumes going to each website. Portals, Social websites and News are the strong candidates there. Whereas Google would have some great data on the entire web, they certainly aren’t disclosing it in the Ad Planner data.

The report suggested that the total internet audience in the Republic now stands at 54%, that’s 1.895 million people using the internet in the past 6 months and 990k use the internet daily. The biggest internet penetration is in Dublin with 60% of the population using the internet in the past 6 months there. What do Irish internet users buy when they are online – well quite a variety of products and services it seems:

The travel/tourism business is, at this point, fairly dependent on the Internet Search. The figures suggest that 521,000 people bought flights online in the past six months and that 324,000 booked hotels or other accommodation in the same period through the web. Finally, what have they used the internet for in the past month? When asked what they used the internet for in the past month, the top responses were as follows:

Travel again scored high as did the News and Current affairs sites; I would certainly suggest that this list will change in the coming year with Car/Auto searches declining along with house searches.