Study suggests web users visit few sites

09/09/2008

New research has indicated that internet users generally visit a tiny percentage of the websites in existence, despite the increasing availability of a range of information.

The study, conducted by Hewlett-Packard (HP), suggested that while social networking profiles show that many users have hundreds of online friends, web users in fact socialise with few people and visit only a low number of websites, the BBC reports.

Speaking at a Silicon Valley press meeting, HP Labs senior fellow Bernardo Huberman highlighted the fact that attention is now the scarcest and most valuable commodity on the web as more information becomes available online.

He also touched upon the implications for those involved in website design and marketing, stating: "Those who manage to convince you to part with a lot of money in exchange for being exclusive, feeling different and feeling part of an elite group are the ones that are going to make it."

While it is difficult to measure exactly how many websites there are on the internet, Netcraft's monthly web server survey received responses from 176.7 million sites on the biggest servers across all domain names in August.