Lets start with browsers, as this is something that is constantly in the news all over the world. Firefox was the number one browser here on Ghacks in 2009, with a share of 49.11%, followed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with 34,90%, Google Chrome with 6.73%, Safari with 4.02% and Opera with 3.88%.

Things have changed noticeably two years later. Internet Explorer is now the most used browser with a market share of 34.59%, that is only .31% less than two years ago. Firefox dropped significantly from the all time high to 32.14%, a drop of nearly 17% in two year’s time. Chrome managed to get market share and is now sitting at 21.01%, an increase of exactly that 17% that Firefox lost. Safari moved up .30 percent, Opera usage dropped to 2.27%, unless Opera Mini is included in the calculation which would add another 2.29% to Opera’s market share.

When you look at the different browser versions you see the following distribution:

Internet Explorer:

Internet Explorer 8 is the most used browser with 56.59%, followed by Internet Explorer 9 with 17.75%, Internet Explorer 6 with 13.83% and Internet Explorer 7 with 11.79%. Microsoft at least here on Ghacks has a lot of convincing to do to get IE users to switch to more recent versions of the browser. It is likely that the majority of requests that use IE6 or IE7 come from company networks.

Firefox:

The most used Mozilla browser on Ghacks in June 2011 was Firefox 4.0.1 with a share of 44.63%, followed by Firefox 5 with 16.07%, Firefox 3.6.17 with 11.25 and Firefox 4.0 with 4.18%. Many users are still using outdated versions of the browser, Firefox 3.6.3 for instance which is still having a share of 1.38% of all Firefox visits. This highlights one of the core problems of Mozilla: Getting users to update the browser to more recent versions. It needs to be noted that Firefox 5 has been released at the end of June. It is expected that the browser’s market share will rise considerably in July.

Chrome:

Google Chrome is the clear winner when you look at market share gain in the past two years. Most Ghacks visitors run various versions of Chrome 12 and 11. Older versions are still being used, Chrome 10 for instance has a market share of nearly 2%.

Opera Mini:

Opera Mini had more connections in June 2011 than the desktop version of Opera. That’s an increase of nearly 2% over the past two years.

Google Chrome, at least here on Ghacks, managed to snag away market share from the Firefox web browser, and not Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Operating Systems

Windows was the most used operating system back in 2009, with a share of 88.62% of all visits, followed my Apple Macintosh systems with 5.60% and Linux with 4.89%.

The situation has not changed by a lot in two year’s time. Windows is still the most used OS with a share of 84.93%, followed by Macintosh with 4.17% and Linux with 3.66%. Android is having nearly double the visit rate of the iPhone, with 1.41% to 0.77%. This is followed by SymbianOS with 0.76% and iPad with 0.72%.

Mobile use is increasing a lot, and it may be time to get a special theme for mobile users to improve their experience on site.

Windows:

Windows XP was the most used Windows operating system in June with a share of 46.51%, closely followed by Windows 7 with 42.88%. Vista came in third with a share of 9.90%. That’s a drop of 17% for XP in the last two years, and of almost 20% for Vista.

And there is apparently at least one user who is connecting to Ghacks with Windows ME.

Screen Resolution

The majority of Ghacks visitors operate a screen resolution of 1024×768 or more. When you look at individual resolutions you see 1024×768 at the top with a share of 20.59%, followed by 1366×768 with 13.85%, 1280×800 with 11.12% and 1280×1024 with 8.51%.

Screen resolutions have – surprisingly – changed only little when compared to two years ago. In 2009, 1024×768 was the most used resolution with 22%, followed by 1280×800 with 19.26% and 1280×1024 with 16.16%. Only the 1366×768 resolution was nowhere to be seen back then. It has become popular in recent years only, especially on notebook systems but also on the desktop.

Other tidbits

Almost 80% of all Ghacks visitors have Java enabled in their browser. That’s an impressive value, considering that it is likely that the majority does not need Java at all on the web.

The top five countries according to Google Analytics are:

• United States
• India
• United Kingdom
• Brazil
• Canada

Most popular languages of the operating systems are:

• en-us
• en-gb
• en
• pt-br
• fr

The top search engine is Google which refers 60.68% of all search engine visitors followed by Bing with 4.95% and Yahoo with 2.39%.

Anything else that’s missing that you would like to know, or something that you want to add? Let me know in the comments.

The biggest complaint I hear around however is over the fact Google Analytics doesn’t have any kind of ‘live tracking’ functions, statistics refresh just once per 24hours which can become a pain with time.

Enter Woopra.

Woopra is a real-time tracking service with a huge range of features and is also completely free at the moment, although premium services will eventually be available.

Woopra is also in private beta, although by signing up there’s a good chance you’ll be accepted fairly promptly. Current restrictions also include the number of websites you can have tracked for the beta.

Woopra is a desktop application, although a basic version exists online, nothing compared to Google Analytics however. I prefer using a desktop program however as they perform better, can have more intuitive interfaces and more advanced features.

The standout Woopra features include:

• Live Tracking
  Visitor tracking updated in real-time, dozens of other analytics updated several times a day. Live tracking is particularly useful for reacting to sudden events such as a Digg traffic surge etc.
• Rich User Interface
  Great UI combined with easy to use data representation tools and overlays.
• Multiple Site Monitoring
• Deep Analytics and Search Capabilities
  Huge range of data, all indexed for easy searching such as “Specific user names, IP addresses, geographic locations, user browsing data, visitor history, visitor paths, arrival and departure points”
• Instant Chatting
  A little creepy, but you can make a chat box pop-up in any site visitors browser. Not sure how many people would accept this and have a conversation.
• Visitor Tagging
  Recognise and monitor types of users and regular visitors.
• Real-time Notifications
  Define actions then receive notifications.
• Integration
  Integrate with WordPress (and other blog platforms) to get dashboard access to Woopra statistics. Also a wide range of developer tools enable plugins and applications to take advantage of the Woopra platform.

I highly recommend you giving this service a try!

Text Stat can be useful for quite a few users, let me give you one example. You can check out word repetitions with it easily. Say you are writing an article for a website and want to make it keyword rich, you do not want to add your main keyword to often, just often enough and use synonyms when the limit is reached.

You can check your text and get figures on how many times you have been using the main keyword. It still requires some quick calculation on your part about keyword density. If the figures are to high you simply exchange some of them with synonyms.

Another option would be to have a quick option to check if the text meets certain requirements such as a specific word count or amount of paragraphs.