As we approach the end of the year, I thought I’d roll up some statistics that people occasionally ask about.
As a baseline — per Quantcast, the Stack Exchange Network is ranked #364 in overall USA network traffic, and Stack Overflow itself is ranked #598.
These numbers are from Google Analytics for the period of January 1, 2010 to December 14, 2010.
Where in the world do Stack Overflow users come from?
| United States | 30.5% |
| India | 8.6% |
| United Kingdom | 7.2% |
| Germany | 4.7% |
| Canada | 4.1% |
| France | 2.7% |
| Australia | 2.7% |
| Netherlands | 2.0% |
| Italy | 1.9% |
| Brazil | 1.7% |
Compared to last year’s numbers, the trend here is basic globalization 101 — more and more traffic from outside the USA over time, where the US dropped from 36% to just 30% of the total in a single year. The top 10 countries only account for 66% of traffic overall, down from 71% last year.
How do Stack Overflow users find the site?
| Google (organic) | 87% |
| Direct | 6.0% |
| Bing | 0.9% |
| Google (referral) | 0.9% |
| 0.6% |
No, Google isn’t a monopoly, they just play one on the internet. Just kidding! please don’t hurt me mister googles
What web browsers do Stack Overflow users use?
| Firefox | 44.1% |
| Internet Explorer | 22.7% |
| Chrome | 22.6% |
| Safari | 7.4% |
| Opera | 2.4% |
| Mozilla | 0.5% |
Note that within Internet Explorer, the breakdown is 60% IE8, 26% IE7, and 13.5% IE6. The Firefox breakdown is primarily 3.5 and 3.6, with a smattering of older versions. Chrome is … all over the map, probably because by the time you read this, they’ve incremented the version again.
The big news here relative to last year is the huge jump for Chrome, mostly coming at the expense of IE and Firefox.
What operating systems do Stack Overflow users use?
| Windows | 74.7% |
| Mac | 14.7% |
| Linux | 9.5% |
| iPhone | 0.4% |
We didn’t report these stats for last year, but I doubt they are terribly surprising to anyone.
What screen resolutions do Stack Overflow users have?
| 1280 x 1024 | 18.6% |
| 1280 x 800 | 14.0% |
| 1680 x 1050 | 13.5% |
| 1440 x 900 | 11.4% |
| 1024 x 768 | 8.2% |
| 1920 x 1200 | 8.1% |
| 1366 x 768 | 4.3% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 2.3% |
| 1600 x 900 | 1.6% |
| 1152 x 864 | 1.1% |
This is very good news compared to last year! What I mainly look at here is the horizontal width. We design for a fixed minimum width of 1024 px and that stat declined from 12% to 8% over the last year.
So there you have it — a profile of the average 2010 Stack Overflow user, at least for these metrics! I think this covers most of the questions I see asked on meta about our analytics, but if there are any other metrics you think might be useful to share, make a case for them in the comments.
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65 Comments
Sad to see Canada drop a spot :(
We’ll get you Germany!
I would love to see:
\Where in the world do Stack Overflow answering users come from?\
Basically only showing those users who have answered questions.
Ste
Wow! India is 2nd! :)
I’m sad to see Android doesn’t even feature on the OS list, Are we that statistically insignificant?
is 1920×1080 lumped in with 1920×1200 perchance? I figured there are lots of people with laptops with that resolution since 1920×1200 has become more rare in favor of the allmighty “Full HD” resolution.
IE in second place? really… ??
So maybe time to design the site for even wider screens, or better still make it flexible but with a min-width of 1024?
Also these are all percentages, but of what?
What happens if you add up all European countries to one?
Interesting stats, It would be interesting to see the numbers in terms of question and answer contribution by country also.
How about posting some StackExchange API stats?
Can you please give us the browsers per continent?That would be really interesting as well.. I really want to see where the IE is standing.. I would never guess that it could be on the second place for SO :)
Great stats. Thanks!
The only thing I found really surprising was that the IE numbers were so high. I also would’ve expected IE6 to be less than 5% of IE users. I’m curious as to how many people were using beta browsers: IE9, FF4, and Chrome10.
Also any stats on if JavaScript was enabled? What about Flash?
Also any stats on individual StackExchange sites would be cool.
>What happens if you add up all European countries to one?
Someone in Brussels jizzes in their pants.
Seriously, re: resolutions – sad to see so many developers work on tiny tiny displays. I can only hope they’re doing research on their netbook on the way home…
I’d be interested in user by country per capita.
@adam – I’m guessing a significant amount of traffic comes from people at work, and many corporate offices still keep IE 6 around (poor guys). So yeah.
I’m amazed China hasn’t made the list.
Cool.
It would be nice to have this stats live :)
I’m not a fan of wide websites. It’s hard to track wide columns of text when reading, and multiple columns of widgets are mostly distracting clutter. I prefer to keep my browser around 960 pixels wide so I can keep track of other windows next to it (unless I’m looking at large pictures or HD video).
I can’t think of any good reasons why a text based site would need to be wider. Vertical is so much more useful for processing lots of text.
It would be interesting to see the percentage of logged in vs. guest users, especially regarding the chunk of traffic from google.
Thanks for the stats.
Curious about Internet Explorer. Do programmers still use IE?
lol
India 2nd on the list!
I see more Microsoft Fans here.
IE and chrome very close, now that Chrome has opened for business users too it can mean bye bye to IE.
@Shoban, you’re surprised by IE but not by Windows itself? Both of these are used by the lower common denominator and bottom feeders of the developer world, so it’s no surprise they are both high up on the list. The meek have inherited the earth.
@dude, Guess what? Some of us visit Stack Overflow whilst we’re at work, where we have to use Internet Explorer to access the Web because of company policy (see comment from @swilliams). You know it’s stupid, I know it’s stupid, but that’s just the way it is. What am I going to do, not visit the site at all? I don’t think so. Do try not to be so condescending next time.
Have you also measured browser window dimension along with screen resolution? I rarely have my browser window maximized and I don’t think I’m alone in this.
@dude, @john topley
You are right… I work in a corporate environemtn which runs IE6.. but we developers have the luxury of installing other browsers :-)
Hope developers who use IE6 are not web developers.
Would be interesting to see:
1) Stats on phone and tablet browsers.
2) Engagement: what sorts of users spend more time, contribute more, etc.
The hell???? IE6 here????
If I may chime in, I’ll add that while my screen is 1680 pixels wide (or 1280, depending on the place), I do not feel the need to have my browser window use up all that space; better for multitasking. It would be better to measure the viewport (and even then, you have to subtract the vertical scrollbar width from it, 17 pixels, AFAICT). Personally, I think no website these days should require more than 1000 pixels of horizontal space.
Weighting the visitor numbers from countries according to population size would make the ranking more meaningful IMO.
Weighted according to nation size, the order is as follows:
1. aus
2. canada
3. nether
4. uk
5. us
6. germany
7. france
8. italy
9. brazil
10. india
Perhaps Australia’s position is the most surprising? Russia, China, Japan are perhaps under-represented due to significant language differences. Indonesia and Africa under-represented due to developing status?
Ben, not surprising AUS on top, we are country of winners :-) Except in the Ashes :-(
Per capita:
Making the assumption StackOverflow had 100 million visitors last year and combined with Wikipedia population data we get:
% Pop
Netherlands 2,00% 16634600 12,02%
Australia 2,70% 22557840 11,97%
Canada 4,10% 34349000 11,94%
United Kingdom 7,20% 62041708 11,61%
United States 30,50% 310912000 9,81%
Germany 4,70% 81757600 5,75%
France 2,70% 65447374 4,13%
Italy 1,90% 60418711 3,14%
Brazil 1,70% 190732694 0,89%
India 8,60% 1189872000 0,72%
The formatting will probably be terrible.
This list is sorted after the last column which is the number of visitors related to country population.
Any chance of a breakdown on Windows access? e.g. how much 7, Vista, XP, or even 2000.
Similarly I realize it might be a hard stat to pull out, but I’m curious how the numbers by country break down when compared by “questioner” vs. “answerer”? e.g. My question:answer ratio is about 1:25
Finally, any chance of a mobile breakdown? e.g. how much android, iphone/ipad/ipod, windows mobile, blackberry, etc.
Wow. I never knew so many people could tolerate Internet Explorer :)
I was quite surprised to see Chrome climbing up the ladder there. (Well, not really – it is the best browser on any platform.)
I’m a little disappointed to see Linux having such a small percentage, but my screen resolution came in second!
Please use correct map of india
@George
I’m guessing work machines with only IE installed.
After a decade of Opera I’m using chrome on all my machines
So what is “Google (referral)” vs. “Google (organic)”? I’m assuming by the percentages that organic means the user performed a search and clicked on a search result.
But does referral mean they clicked on a sponsored link (does SO have Google ads?)? Or does it just mean the user clicked a link on a non-search Google application like Gmail or Google Reader?
> Or does it just mean the user clicked a link on a non-search Google application like Gmail or Google Reader?
This is my understanding.
If there is an 2010 top tags, will be intresting.
Is the Stack Exchange network accessible from China? Given they’ve got a blanket ban on Blogger, I wonder if this is why the world’s most populous nation with heaps of smart technical people doesn’t make the cut?
India Rocks!
You have to take into account that the monitors that the user views the site on can quite possibly the “3rd monitor”; often a small side one that the browser sits on, whereas you may work on your other 1 or 2 large screens. My setup anyway.
I doubt the result of web browser in use, IE shouldn’t be at no 2 :)
@Ben
Actually weighing against population sizes could also be misleading, You might as want to use internet penetration rate as well. India has ~7 percent internet penetration in comparison to other countries. Or even better maybe weigh it against number of programmers per country, but where will you get this data? Hmm
Try wolfram, e.g.
internet penetration US / (India, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, France)
Result:
4.457 | 16.12 | 3.721 | 15.2 | 5.45 (2008 estimate)
Or more details (including sources and graphs):
United States | internet users | 230.6 million people
(2008 estimate)
India | internet users | 51.75 million people
(2008 estimate)
Netherlands | internet users | 14.3 million people
(2008 estimate)
Germany | internet users | 61.97 million people
(2008 estimate)
Australia | internet users | 15.17 million people
(2008 estimate)
France | internet users | 42.32 million people
(2008 estimate)
@Jeff: you may want to fix the displayed timestamps for responses. (3 minute response time for my previous followup does make me look good :))
how could I miss the date part (forest and the trees at work)
I’m from China and really wondering why there’s no China in the list, since Stackoverflow.com is not blocked here.
>>Also these are all percentages, but of what?
HA! Of course Jeff wrote the post. Take statistics 101 before you write a post like this again.
Surprised that Italy is even on the list at all. Wow.
Very surprised by the low Bing/Yahoo numbers in relation to Google. Although I do like how strongly Stack Overflow shows in Google’s results. Anything that pushes down experts exchange is okay by me (e.g. can’t stand their cloaking to promote purchasing a membership).
Here’s to another year of growth!
And Spain?? Where is Spain? wtf.. I hate my country.
Brazil!!! We’ll get you first place!
great site with testking 642-357 good post….i really appreciated your work
What about 1920×1080 screen resolution? :(
anyone from nepal?
Glad that many Indians visit SO ;)
Nice to see India there. The % is gonna grow.
Hmm, India was growing fast. And looks like it’s growing.
thats from visitor, and now where is statistic for people who aswering question??
Amazed to see India at the second spot
It would be good to see the stats divided into the continents: North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Is the 2011 analytics up?
2011 anyone ?
On the programming side, Indians are leveling due to others ruining user’s egos and and marking down questions.