This Is Ghacks (Stats April 2016)
I have published quite a few articles over the years in which I analyzed the rise and decline of operating systems or web browsers, but never really revealed how the situation looks here on Ghacks.
What's the top web browser that visits Ghacks, the number one operating system, or the top mobile operating system?
This article answers some of these questions (and a few more). Stats have been collected by Google Analytics in the past 30 day period. Please note that users who run ad blockers are usually blocking Google Analytics as well which means that this is not a 100% accurate representation.
More than 40% of Ghacks visitors use adblockers which means in worst case that about 40% of visits are missing from the stats.
Operating systems
The Windows family is in the top position with 71.70% of all recorded visits in the past 30 days followed by Google Android with 10.05% and Apple Macintosh with 6.28%.
- Windows: 71.70%
- Android: 10.05%
- Macintosh: 6.28%
- iOS: 5.80%
- Linux: 4.44%
Macintosh seems surprisingly high considering that I don't write about Apple or Mac systems at all. The only explanation I have for that is that Mac users are interested in browser, privacy and Internet coverage that is done here on this site.
Fun facts: 0.02% use Nokia devices, 0.11% BlackBerry, 0.26% Chrome OS and 0.51% Windows Phone.
A look at the Windows editions reveals that Windows 10 is the most used operating system, followed by Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
- Windows 10: 42.56%
- Windows 7: 41.02%
- Windows 8.1: 10.91%
- Windows XP: 2.79%
- Windows 8: 1.55%
- Windows Vista: 0.99%
Windows 10's high ranking comes as a surprise but may be explained by the articles that I have published in the past months covering the operating system.
Most usage tracking services see Windows 10 at less than 20% currently. The only exception to that is Steam which sees Windows 10 at about 40% as well.
Fun facts: 0.01% use Windows 2000 or Windows NT
Web Browsers
The most popular web browser used to access Ghacks Technology News is Google Chrome, followed by Firefox, and then Internet Explorer.
- Google Chrome: 53.53%
- Firefox: 21.96%
- Internet Explorer: 8.20%
- Safari: 7.07%
- Edge: 4.19%
- Opera: 1.69%
Please note that mobile and desktop browsers are mixed which explains why Chrome and Safari are doing better / well.
Also, many Chromium-based and Firefox-based web browsers such as Vivaldi or Pale Moon are not listed separately but included in those ratings above.
Edge is not doing overly well if you consider that more than 40% of Windows users who visited the site use Windows 10
Fun facts: SeaMonkey sits at 0.04% and Maxthon at 0.16%, and there have been some Netscape connections as well.
Screen Resolution
This is probably not as interesting as web browser and operating system stats.
- 1920x1080: 21.83%
- 1366x768: 18.09%
- 360x640: 5.42%
- 1600x900: 5,16%
- 1024x768: 4.77
Surprisingly enough, many visitors run lower resolutions than I expected.
Fun facts: The largest resolution that is statistically relevant is 3840x2160 with 0.09% of all visits. There were connections with a resolution of 1600x20000 but that sounds kinda fake. There are some weird resolutions in the report, for instance 1067x600, 962x601 or 403x617.
Now You: Did you expect this result?
I use privacy Badger to block analytics and other nonsense, and Ublock origin on some sites but NOT on Ghacks, maybe I’m out of the game because of this.:(
Fun fact: Sometimes I access Ghacks and other tech sites using a text mode browser on Linux terminal. :)
“Macintosh seems surprisingly high considering that I don’t write about Apple or Mac systems at all. The only explanation I have for that is that Mac users are interested in browser, privacy and Internet coverage that is done here on this site.”
I mainly browse this site on a Mac simply because my PC is a desktop and my Mac is a laptop and often the Mac is more convenient for web browsing.
Virtual machines. May explain the high numbers of Win10 and weird resolutions. Typing this within a VM. At the end of the day, stats may not necessarily reflect the true host OS/system of the reader base…
Mr. Brinkmann:
I removed my ad Blockers from http://www.ghacks.net.
It was quite easy with a click!
Reading this article helped me to help the site.
i
Nice and interesting article.
“Surprisingly enough, many visitors run lower resolutions than I expected.”
I was surprised and happy to see how many are using higher resolutions considering the past several years of the desktops are dead talk and (web, browser, software) developers focusing on designing primarily for mobile devices which is ironic because you can’t develop crap on a small mobile device with less power.
Mobile doesn’t exist without desktops.
I also always thought that it was funny that computer screens were getting smaller while TV’s got larger and capable of computing, or they are at least smart ones.
Now people want bigger screens for mobile devices. Actually, no one ever wanted smaller screens, it was all that was offered.
Imagine where Windows 10 would be if Microsoft was NOT giving it away for free. :-/
And if they hadn’t used dubious means to push it on people, although this made me laugh…
http://fudzilla.com/news/40386-windows-10-pop-up-invades-japanese-bill-boards
Maybe they should’ve blocked it or something. :)
> Macintosh seems surprisingly high considering that I don’t write about Apple or Mac systems at all. The only explanation I have for that is that Mac users are interested in browser, privacy and Internet coverage that is done here on this site.
Pretty much, yeah. I came here to learn about the ongoing Windows privacy nightmares and because I have a love-hate relationship with a platform I’m obliged to stay abreast of to support others and occasionally myself too, but there’s still a lot of valuable content for the technorati here that’s essentially platform-agnostic. Great job. I won’t show up in your stats, because I DNS-blackhole and ad-block GA and ad servers (on a Linux gateway). Sorry about that. I use RSS to keep up with the site.
Chrome can in fact be configured to be privacy-respecting. Google the instructions; Google publishes a whitepaper. I don’t see any point in Firefox now that Mozilla are playing stupid. I’m surprised by the Win10 numbers, though–either the readership isn’t *that* bothered, or they’re all using ad-blockers.
And do consider a Mac. They aren’t all used by hipsters, you know. :)
Interesting stuff! Thanks Martin.
@Corky
… in full agreement on all points, Corky!
I don’t understand why so many allow themselves to remain uneducated regarding computers and their usage. Too busy playing on them to spend any time at all studying about them, I suppose. Oh well…
I use 4K monitor. 3840×2160, windows 7, Firefox
@Jeff . Or despite the general anti Windows 10 / love affair with Firefox amongst those who comment here the “silent majority” of visitors (who are presumably also tech savvy) think otherwise ? (Chrome and Windows10 stats)
“Tech Savviness” is different from running after the ‘latest-greatest and improved’ Microsoft OS. Who uses Win 10 Netbot Edition is clearly looking for the status of “PC Geek”. I personally have a job that requires hardware that runs well on Win 7: I can’t stop my job for a ninfty My Mini Pony interface on Windows 10. Is Firefox Aurora the best browser? Is Windows 10 a MUST FOR EVERYONE? No.
And NO.
Well based on the tactics that both Chrome and Windows 10 used i would suggest some people do what their computer tells them, i asked someone once why they used Chrome and they said because the Internet said to install it, what do you mean the Internet asked you i asked, well when i opened the Internet it kept telling me about a faster way to browser the Internet with a blue button so i clicked on it, was their answer.
I think you’ll find the vast majority of people don’t even know what Internet browser they use, it’s just the Internet, much in the same way as the majority of people don’t know if their running Windows 7, 8, or 10, they simply use what someone tells them to use.
“I think you’ll find the vast majority of people don’t even know what Internet browser they use, it’s just the Internet,”
My mother thinks Firefox is called “Mozilla” (which she pronounces Modzilla”). She doesn’t know why she uses it, though, and she’ll panic if I use the word “browser” in a sentence. :)
No offense to anyone but I find it laughable that the majority of your visitors are on Windows 10 and probably consider themselves “tech savvy”. Windows 10 is not the best Windows even if it’s the latest. It just goes to show that people have a craze for the latest regardless of quality or a proper understanding of technology. It’s a very badly behaving OS (forced drivers and updates really? and more of that awful dumbed down Metro that has eliminated many features and settings). I believe Windows 7 or 8.1 with a Start menu replacement is better. But the “smart” or “tech savvy” people seem to be crazy about just being on the latest. It’s a pity where we are headed.
Correlation does not imply causation. Also, I don’t think people browse the site because they want to feel “tech savvy”, they do it because Martin publishes interesting and helpful articles. And if you use an up-to-date Windows Vista SP2 (or later) with IE9 (or later), then you can use Tracking Protection to block ads from third-party domains on any given website, which already helps a lot. The EasyList TPL (Tracking Protection List) from Adblock Plus works just fine in Internet Explorer.
https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery
Just 40%? Was expecting more since you keep talking about AdBlockers and publicizing them for free.
your winnt and win2000 numbers are way to low, we have over 120 computers runing these systems and most of them stop by your site at least weekly, firefox 3.6. But we do require noscript and ad blockers
@Martin:
I don’t think the OS stats is much helpful. You have only concentrated on MS, Apple & Android mostly. We don’t see more articles on Linux here. So, if you write more articles on Linux, it’ll have more visits than many other OS categories.
I’m sure that Windows 10 is getting more visits mainly because the OS is buggy and privacy issues. So, there are more articles on Windows. Many have to read Security bulletins to avoid installing botched/telemetry/Windows 10 upgrade,….
I wish you’ll write more articles on OS other than Windows in coming days.
“there have been some Netscape connections as well”
What the fu** that is crazy, i didnt even know you could still download netscape. Talk about relics of the past. I wonder how many sites would even render properly on it.
BTW, Whitelisted your on my Adblockers. Ive started coming here recently, and love your work. Want to see more articles!
Netscape 9.0.0.6 is compatible with many addons for Firefux version 3.6.x
MartÃn,
I read most of Ghacks’ content through Flipboard on my Android smartphone. I have no idea how that shows up in the website stats, if at all.
On Flipboard, I added Ghacks’ Twitter feed and it works great. I found out that it works better than adding the rss feed, because with the Twitter feed I can see the whole mobile site article (with comments and all), instead of just the feed.
By the way, would you consider creating an “official” Flipboard Ghacks magazine? That’d be great! I don’t know how many of us read it through Flipboard, or how hard it’d be, but maybe it’d add a few additional readers to the site. Also I don’t know if you get any revenue from a Flipboard magazine. If you don’t get any revenue, then of course it wouldn’t be convenient to create one.
Sorry I missed the Android and iOS percentages first read through… I am very surprised it is so low.
What about % of desktop vs mobile? Can you detect page views opened from RSS clients?
Mark I cannot detect RSS.
Honestly I’m on a netbook running xp and firefox-better-edition AKA Palemoon – certified on browserspy dot dk
Three surprises here :
Windows 10: 42.56% (1) : I wouldn’t have expected Windows 10 to lead. Biggest surprise. Lack of anti-adblockers? :)
Google Chrome: 53.53% (1) : twice as much as Firefox (21.96%) is frightening, that’s because I run Firefox (21.96%)
1600×900: 5,16% (4) : I would have expected this resolution to be more frequent than 1920×1080 (21.83%)
Honestly, given the type of visitors on this website, you have to conclude that the numbers are meaningless. Come on everyone, fess up: How many of you are spoofing your OS, browser, and resolution RIGHT NOW? ;)
I guess the only numbers I “sort of” believe are the ones pertaining to mobile devices. It’s a lot harder for mobile users to spoof their specs.
I do with Secret Agent on certain websites I don’t trust.
“How many of you are spoofing your OS, browser, and resolution”
Not me. IF you allow JS (real world/worst case scenario) to collect such data, there are so many ways to get or infer these that unless you mod and compile your own browser and get it right, in terms of fingerprinting, you just make yourself unique. (and yes, there are other techniques to block/spoof this outside the browser). I do spoof my user agent from FF whatever to latest ESR, but that’s it. Best defense, block offending JS if possible (3rd party etc), next defense – look legit. eg If you’re going to spoof your timezone, you would need to cover locale, IP range (maybe – certainly be on a VPN etc), language, date/currency formats, font info maybe, and more – in more ways than you could imagine.
Pants, I hear what you’re saying, but realistically I doubt most sites have implemented the kinds of techniques needed to track me from session to session. I have only ever identified one or two websites that seem to do this, and even those have spotty results. I agree though that this is a running battle, and that the ultimate goal should be to hide in a crowd rather than to stand out like a neon sign that shouts “I’m invisible”.
Truth is I’m running Windows 3.1 (updated) :)
@ Tom Hawack:
Remind us, Tom: which French airport are you working at?
Windows 3.1 Is Still Alive, And It Just Killed a French Airport | VICE News
https://news.vice.com/article/windows-31-is-still-alive-and-it-just-killed-a-french-airport
Sample pilot chatter:
“What’s that mountain goat doing way up here?”
“Look at the size of the tentacles on that thing!”
;-)
@Tom: You mean that lesser-known version of Windows 3.1 that runs 64-bit CPUs, right? ;)
Would be nice to see cross stats: OS\Browser :-)
Really surprised how many Win 10 in this blog compared to usual comments about it… A little bit with Chrome too.
I’m anti-Win-10, but you should never make guesses about reality based on the comment section of, well of anything online. It is almost a universal truth that only a very small pct of people that visit a site also comment.
I think Reddit has stated that less that 5% of the people that visit the site also participate in comments, at all. And people that do comment might well be statistically out of line with the ‘silent majority’.
You’ve right. Hovewer, I’m still surprised about this ‘silent majority’ :-) So for curiosity I would glad to see how many people use Firefox between Win 7\XP\Linux and Win 10.
PS: @Martin, it is possible that MVPS list of HostsMan blocks some of your AD? I’ve found this because usually I post with IE and not with Firefox (and AD blocker of KIS is disabled by default).
Yes that is quite possible.
Thanks for all that, Martin!
It was all surprising to me, with the screen resolution section being perhaps the least surprising. I was mostly surprised by the number of Win10 users.
I wonder if Brave reports as Chrome?
Yes it does.
Screen resolutions on smartphones are probably getting thrown in there also. Which would explain some of the ‘low resolutions’ and possibly the weird ones too.
Tho, I’m a bit surprised my 1280×1024 didn’t get you a few thousand hits a month :-P
So chances are that someone is reading this article right now using Netscape on Windows NT and a monitor of 962×601 pixels resolution. Raise your hand, you poor soul :)) j/k
Kind of a shame there was no Windows 9x/ME. But does that mean that Windows NT would be Windows NT 4.5x or below?
Whoops, you’re right, got my 4.0 and 3.51 mixed up
WinNT 4.0 was the last version released by Microsoft (OS, not “kernel”).
I’d be interested in what, if any, current browser would even run on Win2k or WinNT.
This was a refreshing article, Martin. Good job.
Where are all the 1920 x 1200 monitors though? This is the good monitor resolution, haha. Maybe all the users with these are running ad-blockers?
I actually run an ad-blocker on all devices where I can, but have gHacks whitelisted at work. I used to have it whitelisted at home too, but the ads got so bad (big and slooooow) that I blocked them and joined your Patreon thing. Ghacks is fantastic and worth paying to read.
Agreed, 1920×1200 on both of my main displays. I wonder though if it’d report the full horizontal resolution of a multi-screen setup, or the resolution of the screen currently displaying the browser window?. If it’s the former, my work resolution for example would be 5120×1200 (a 1920×1200 screen in the middle, two 1600×1200 screens either side).
Most Adblockers don’t block web statistics pulls. It usually takes a combination of blockers for it to stop the pull of some of the info. Otherwise you have to use programs to fake the information. It’s really a simple PHP script that can get most of that info everytime you load the page.
Most addblockers block Google Analytics AFAIK.
Your correct there. Now what about disabling all the fingerprinting prefs in about:config (I have both Pale Moon and Firefox ESR set up with those privacy/security issues disabled), would it cripple the results a bit?
So, maybe it shows that less security conscious users (roughly correlated to those who don’t use ad-blocking software) use Windows 10 and Chrome – maybe not so surprising?
Those resolutions are probably from using the Random Agent Spoofer’s Addon or Secret Agent which gives the option to randomise resolutions and other things.Or someone has a strange monitor.
Windows 7 (Firefox) and Android (Opera), Not with crowd.
It looks like that non standard resolutions are from unmaximised windows.
I know i’ve been holding out really testing Edge as a primary browser because it has no adblocking. Still, these stats aren’t too surprising, though with all the complaining in the comments on every single windows 10 post I would have expected linux and windows 7 to be higher ;)
Either that or more Linux and Windows 7 users are running add blockers and Windows 10 users are so used to adverts they just don’t care, or lack awareness of add blockers.
I have a pi-hole.net ad blocking server running on my home network. Kills the ads in every browser and app. I don’t have a Pi but run it in an ubuntu 14.04 server VM on my esxi server.
I’m in that 1.69% ツ
Opera always crashes my laptop every time i install it.It juyst freezes my pc until i cut the power.Annoying
I think you simply need more fiber in your diet.
That usually clears everything out for me.
@Unholy LFC
hahah nice :)
you should post you problem on Opera forum
https://forums.opera.com/
or on Opera blogs (depending which version you are using, dev, beta, stable)
http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/
just post your spec (OS, Opera version, antivirus/firewall…) and explain your problem
I’m sure someone will help you, because those things shouldn’t happen (crashing)
… no matter how bad person you are :)
Yes! “_” That sounds like that might be it, I will go to confession then install it again and see.
Edit: Well after a few hail Mary’s and a day of prayer i installed it again. Unfortunately my soul is still taitned as it still it doesn’t work. Anyway thanks for the suggestion.With advice as good as you gave me,i am sure you will do well in the tech world.
well, you are probably bad person and worshiping devil
that’s why your laptop crashes :P
Does RSS readers have any visibility in these stats? I know there aren’t too many of them but you can count me as one (reading regularly using Inoreader).
No, RSS readers are not included.
Good surprises: Win NT, Seamonkey
Bad Surprise: G00gle Chr0me
No Palemoon at all?
Probably included in Firefox stats just as Vivaldi is included in Chrome stats. Version 38.9 of Firefox, has 1.25% of visits of the browser.
@Martin Brinkmann: Thank you and keep up the good work. :)
FF v38.9???
I am on v38.7.1 which is the latest ESR release, which I choose to use because I am sick of Mozilla’s constant new release schedule.
Pale Moon uses this version when you check the header it sends, and since it does not use Mozilla’s version scheme anymore, you cannot equate its version with that of Firefox ESR.
@Martin Brinkmann: Yes. But in another note or area in this article. What do you think?
@Martin Brinkmann: Would it be to much to ask for if other Firefox/Gecko and Chrome/Chromium based-off/forked-off are included in parenthesis, for your article?
You mean to indicate the they are included?
How have the mighty (XP) fallen ;)
(As you know I have long whitelisted ghacks but video ads are killer)
The weird resolutions don’t seem weird at all to me. Maybe those users are browsing with non-maximized windows that have user-set sizes?
In Windows display settings (at least in win7), user can “Make it easier to read what’s on your screen”.
The choices presented are 100%, 125%, and 150%.
Having chosen 150%, user with 1600×900 screen yields 1067×600
(1/1.5 * 1600) by (1.1.5 * 900)
That’s DPI scaling.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn469266(v=vs.85).aspx
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2015/12/08/display-scaling-in-windows-10/
No, resolution is only reported when the windows is maximized. They’re probably using virtual machines that aren’t maximized, with their browser maximized within the VM.
I see, thanks for the info.