One of the great things about the Internet world (that our TV and Radio departments are envious of) is that we can get statistics about our visitors in real time. All of these statistics are anonymous, they don’t contain information such as your address or your name. We can, however, mine some pretty interesting information from the log files that our web servers generate.
It’s a Windows World
I’m sure its no surprise that the majority of our users are browsing the website using a windows machine and Internet explorer. In fact, 75% of hits to CBC.ca were done from users running Windows XP. Similarly, 72% of the hits to CBC.ca were done from Internet Explorer. Take a look at the breakdown for Jan 1st, 2007 to April 1st, 2007:
Visitor By Browser:
| Internet Explorer | 72.22% |
| Mozilla | 17.46% |
| Safari | 4.62% |
| Others | 5.70% |
Visitors By Operating System:
| Windows XP | 76.39% |
| Windows 2000 | 7.97% |
| Machintosh PowerPC | 4.82% |
| Others | 4.15% |
| Macintosh | 2.06% |
| Windows 98 | 2.01% |
| Linux | 0.87% |
| Windows ME | 0.76% |
| Windows 2003 | 0.50% |
| Windows NT | 0.33% |
How We Get This Information
Every time your browser fetches a page from CBC.ca the web server tracks that “hit” in a log file. Here is what an example log entry looks like:
69.17.178.81 - - [24/Aug/2005:21:03:17 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1"
200 4532 "http://www.google.com/"
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rev:1.7.0)
Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6"
Without going into too much detail, you can see the following information:
- The date and time the request for the page was made
- If the user came to this page from another one.
- The browser version, type, and operating system
- The size of the page the user downloaded
Using the information found in these log entries, we can come up with quite a few types of statistics, such as:
- What country the user is coming from
- What the busiest time of day for CBC.ca is
- What the most popular pages are
- What 3rd party websites are generating the most traffic to us
- If there are any broken links on our site
- What language the user ’s operating system and/or browser supports
How CBC.ca Uses This Information
Understanding who our users are and what type of browsers and operating systems they use is an important part in designing the services that are offered on CBC.ca.
We also use this information to do something we call “dayparting”. If we discover that the majority of the traffic to Business/Money section of the site during the lunch hour, then we may change the way items are displayed in the line-up on the front page. For example, we may promote more “business” related stories.
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I’m surprised that the Firefox usage is that high. I’d say that’s probably 5-7% higher than the Web as a whole.
Darren,
Keep in mind that “Mozilla” can mean anything, Firefox, Netscape, or anything that will send Mozilla as its user agent.
What? No Vista?
Great stuff.
Interesting. Enjoyable.
It begs the question.
When will the day come that the CBC will lead the way and be forthcoming with television ratings?
Eh?
Eh?
Do I have to call and place an ad before this information is available?
I can’t suggest the CBC is deliberately hiding useful information, since the other networks also keep this vital info to themselves.
But aren’t the expectations a little different for a public broadcaster?
Why do you think it is, Tod, that these ratings are not right up front?
Just a thought for further down the road.
It’s not as if the CBC has anything to hide, apart from management salaries and pictures of Cho.
I use Safari and Firefox for CBC.ca and this site too
Not surprising that Windows is first considering it’s a convicted monopolist…. and thanks to news outlets like the CBC, most folks have never even heard of Linux.
Just do a google of the CBC’s coverage of the free and open source software movement over the last few years…just about zilch! But…Bill Gates is interviewed by Peter Mansbridge. Steve Jobs is interviewed by Strombo.
Has anyone at the CBC interviewed folks like Richard Stallman, Bruce Perrens, Mark Shuttleworth etc.? Not at all.
When I tell folks that they can use a free operating system that doesn’t get viruses, spyware etc. they’re definitely interested.
Blake, any chance of seeing your trend charts for the last few years? Now THAT would be interesting because the story not being told here is the gradual rise of Firefox and simultaneous drop of Internet Explorer.
I seem to remember the odd bit of news coverage re: Linux by CBC. Let me consult the search-engine add-on for CBC News via Firefox…
Frankly, I’m surprised that Belinda uses Firefox.
She seems like a Safari grrrl.
I for one would love to see an RMS/Mansbridge matchup, especially if he insists on wearing the disk platter.
Yup Dwight…very little coverage of any consequence of GNU/Linux and free and open source software. Alot of the links are to forum postings by Linux users. And of course none of this Linux related news gets on to either CBC Radio or Television…it’s in the “technology ghetto” on this website.
And there’s never any discussion of the concept of “user freedom” that is at the core of the free software philosophy…specifically the “four freedoms” guaranteed to computer users in the GNU General Public License…the license used by most free and open source software including Linux…namely…the right to run the software for any purpose you want, the right to study how the software works and adapt it to your needs, the right to make copies of the software so you can give it away and help your neighbour and the right to change the software and release your modified copies to the general public…and to make those rights have teeth…you have the right to access the software code.
Most people have never heard of these concepts …because the mainstream media does not like to talk about them…including the CBC.
We live in a world where more and more of our interactions with others are digital. It’s essential that we as citizens have control over the tools we use for those interactions…that we can find out what the software is doing…i.e. when its spying on us.