Latest Stats as at 17/2/2009. These figures cover the 15-day period 1/2/2009 to 15/2/2009. Notes: Earlier figures, each spanning half a month are in brackets. The second and third earlier figures are the Christmas period and are not representative. In the past, trends presented here have matched quite closely with the official "big boys" measurements except you can read this report about two weeks earlier. Vista Market Share ================== For period 1st to 15th February 2009, figures based on visits:- XP 65.3 (was 64.1, 64.7, 64.2, 66.2, 66.7, 68.9, 69.9, 68.6, 69.2, 70.4, 71.6) Vista 20.4 (was 20.9, 22.0, 21.9, 19.6, 19.7, 18.0, 17.0, 17.9, 18.3, 17.5, 15.9) Other Windows 4.3 (was 4.9, 3.3, 3.9, 4.3, 4.2, 4.7, 4.7, 5.3, 4.5, 4.5, 4.0, 4.5) Mac 7.8 (was 7.9, 7.7, 7.3, 7.6, 7.3, 6.6, 6.6, 6.6, 6.1, 6.0, 6.3, 5.8) Linux 1.0 (was 1.0, 1.2, 1.2, 0.9, 1.1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.4) Others 1.2 (was 1.2, 1.1, 1.5, 1.3, 1.1, 0.7, 0.8, 0.7, 0.7, 0.4, 0.7, 0.6) These figures have excluded the Google Desktop, as its browser string does not name the operating system correctly. If included, the XP result is too low and the Others category too high by about 1.1%. The Linux result excludes a few "heavy hitters" who are testing rather than browsing. They are now classified as machines not humans. In the Others category, the iPhone remains a clear market leader. Browser Breakup =============== Percentages for the period 1st to 15th February 2009. IE 67.0 (was 66.2, 66.0, 63.5, 67,5, 68.7, 69.5, 69.4, 68.9, 69.9, 69.7, 70.5, 71.4) FF 22.8 (was 24.2, 24.5, 26.2, 23.2, 22.3, 22.4, 22.6, 22.9, 22.3, 22.5, 21.7, 21.3) Safari 5.9 (was 6.1, 5.8, 5.9, 5.7, 5.6, 5.1, 5.0, 5.0, 4.8, 4.4, 4.8, 4.8) Chrome 1.2 (was 1.1, 1,4, 1.2, 1.1, 0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 0.9, 0.7, 0.8) Opera 1.3 (was 1.1, 0.9, 1.0, 0.8, 0.9, 0.8, 0.9, 0.9, 0.7, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1) All Others 1.8 (was 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 1.7, 1.6, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4, 1.7, 1.6, 1.9, 1.7) These figures are now based on visits, whereas previously they were calculated solely on IP addresses. The new visitor figures are very similar to the old figures, just with a slight drop in Firefox, and a slight rise in the Others category. Current figures based on visitors show Opera just ahead of Chrome. Search Engines Share ==================== Breakup of visits coming via search engines for February 1st to 15th 2009:- Google 85.8 (was 85.5, 82.8, 84.3, 85.6, 86.9, 85.8, 86.3, 87.0, 86.4, 87.8, 87.2) Yahoo 7.8 (was 8.0, 10.1, 9.1, 7.9, 7.6, 7.6, 8.1, 7.5, 7.8, 6.8, 7.3, 7.3, 8.0) Microsoft 2.3 (was 2.3, 2.6, 3.2, 3.0, 2.7, 3.1, 2.5, 2.0, 2.3, 1.7, 2.0, 3.3, 2.6) All others 4.2 (was 4.1, 4.5, 3.3, 3.6, 2.7, 3.4, 3.1, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.5, 5.0, 5.0) The punters prefer Google by a very wide margin. Prominent within the Others section are AOL and Ask, each about a third the size of Microsoft. Old favourites like Altavista, Lycos and DogPile are much smaller again. Tip: Keep observing what Google is not doing. Hackers Analysis ================ Most traffic comes from people surfing the net or robots building search engines etc, but about 0.6% of hits is malicious stuff where people are probing for weaknesses and generally being pests. These people create far more trouble than they are worth, with all sorts of strange agent strings to identify their nasty computers and all sorts of bizarre surfing behaviour. Initially I manually updated my .htaccess file to deny access to rogue IP addresses, but it's all too much trouble. Also it's annoying to see how many nasties keep visiting despite continual '403' errors - a fine tribute to the poor standard of the malicious programming and the lack of ongoing supervision of these pathetic automatons. Lately I have been automatically compiling a list of IP addresses that should be banned, and on Sunday I actually implemented it. All banned IP addresses get a 403 error instead of access to the files. I have a battery of 8 tests for suspicious/malicious behaviour resulting in a list of 203 IP addresses denied access. So far this sounds like a great scheme, but it has come badly unstuck. You can only be denied access if you are making a repeat visit, but most hackers are making their first visit and are not on my list of people to be denied. This list concept can only work in real time and when applied to thousands or even millions of web sites. Someone who probes for files would be banned for a month from millions of sites within a few seconds. Then being a worm would not be much fun. I'll watch for return visits and see if my "deny" file has had any effect. ============================== ==============================