Google Internet Stats Introduced

September 14, 2009 by Lin Edwards

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Google Internet Stats Introduced

(PhysOrg.com) -- Google has quietly introduced a Google Internet Stats website, which presents snippets of statistics and insights for a number of focus areas, and allows you to search within the statistics for specific areas of interest. If you're looking for quick facts, this website could eventually become the favorite place to check out first.

Google Internet Stats gathers its information from a range of International third party sources to present twitter-like entries covering the areas of Consumer Trends, Macro-Economic Trends, Media Consumption and Landscape, and Technology. Each area is broken down into sub-categories. You can locate data by drilling down through the links, or by using the search engine.

Using Google Internet Stats you can find all kinds of snippets of statistics such as: 57% of young people watched a YouTube music video in the last year; 1.6 billion people, or 24% of global population, are now online; over a quarter of Internet users surveyed in six countries in 2008 said most of the time they watch TV at the same time as being on the Internet; and iTunes has sold over six billion songs.

Google gathers the information from an impressive list of sources, including research companies like Nielsen and Comscore, and publications such as The Economist and the Wall Street Journal, but at present the depth of the data is not impressive, and little of it is dated later than June 2009.

While many of the sources it uses have a global presence, the statistics center is hosted on Google's UK domain, and there is a definite slant towards the UK and Europe, but the database does include global data as well. The site is new and the statistics database is growing rapidly. You can even submit your own statistics provided you can supply links to support them.

The Internet Stat Center quietly appeared at the following: link, and it is not yet clear whether Google intends to release similar statistics centers on other regional domains. At its present state of development it is little more than a curiosity, but it may grow to become interesting and useful.

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