GVU's Eighth WWW User Survey Use Graphs

How Users Find out About WWW Pages

Notes:

For this question, respondents could choose more than one answer. Most users find new web pages through other web pages (88%) and through search engines (82%). For the past year (Sixth & Seventh surveys) search engines have outranked other web pages as the source of new pages, that trend has reversed again. Internet directories such as Yahoo, a new choice for this survey, are used by 65% of respondents. Some other categories are virtually identical to the percentage from the Seventh survey: print media (62%), friends (58%), and email signatures (33%). The percentage who find web pages through TV advertising has risen since the last survey (37% Eighth, 30% Seventh) and the percentage using Usenet news continues to drop slightly (30% Eighth, 33% Seventh). Males are still more likely than females to find new web pages with Usenet News (34% males, 23% females). Younger users are more likely to get URLs from friends, while older users are more likely to use print media, books and TV. Novices are more likely to find web pages through TV advertising, while experts use most other routes, especially Usenet News.

Table of Data for All Categories

How Users Find out About WWW Pages

All

Male

USA

50+

Intermediate

27.70%

28.03%

27.09%

27.87%

26.64%

22.44%

24.09%

27.89%

31.70%

29.36%

27.01%

26.64%

Directories

65.08%

64.45%

66.36%

65.99%

66.13%

60.11%

65.01%

65.49%

65.80%

64.77%

64.74%

66.13%

58.53%

57.10%

61.42%

59.27%

64.08%

65.93%

65.24%

58.98%

50.00%

51.80%

60.61%

64.08%

24.48%

24.99%

23.79%

25.14%

27.66%

26.32%

19.51%

25.30%

24.68%

24.08%

22.62%

27.66%

Printed Media

62.18%

64.29%

58.58%

61.90%

62.90%

49.58%

54.82%

64.36%

66.27%

59.44%

64.08%

62.90%

Search Engines

81.91%

83.40%

79.66%

81.43%

88.32%

75.62%

81.28%

83.88%

80.41%

72.96%

85.19%

88.32%

Sigs

33.04%

33.01%

33.52%

33.01%

40.03%

33.52%

31.60%

34.82%

28.74%

28.60%

32.06%

40.03%

36.69%

37.21%

35.75%

38.72%

31.57%

36.01%

32.94%

36.55%

42.24%

43.35%

34.71%

31.57%

29.77%

34.47%

21.99%

29.57%

41.54%

17.73%

25.59%

32.96%

28.00%

23.11%

27.04%

41.54%

87.66%

87.56%

88.20%

87.61%

90.08%

84.21%

87.44%

88.35%

87.80%

84.20%

89.20%

90.08%

For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.

GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280