Internet usage during quarantine times.. What are people looking for?
Very interesting article published on the BBC website regarding Internet usage: People in the UK have turned their online attention to tutoring websites, politics, television programmes and gardening, according to cyber-security company Cloudflare.
The company monitors online traffic to more than 25 million websites that pay for its cyber-attack protections.
However, some of the world’s biggest websites, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Pornhub and YouTube do not use the service and are not included in its figures.
It said the biggest increase in traffic in March, compared with February, had been seen by websites focused on:
- tutoring (up 400%)
- politics – including political parties and message boards (up 320%)
- television programmes – excluding Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and Netflix (up 210%)
- gardening (up 200%)
- children’s education (up 160%)
- Christianity (up 140%)
- information about and discussion of board games (up 140%)
Other topics to see rises included:
- books – excluding e-books such as Amazon Kindle (up 110%)
- desserts and baking (up 80%)
- national news – excluding BBC News and others (up 70%)
- pornography – excluding Pornhub and related sites (up 60%)
- Islam (up 50%)
Several topics have also seen a fall in web traffic, including:
- financial planning (down 69%)
- low-cost travel (down 63%)
- football (down 62%)
- home repair and DIY (down 23%)
- buying and selling homes (down 25%)
- dining out (down 18%)
“It’s not the most representative sample in the world but it’s not bad given our scale, Cloudflare chief technical officer John Graham-Cumming said”
“We handle more than 26 million web properties all over the world”
“We don’t have access to the whole world, but we have a huge number of websites that use us”
“We handle about 10% of the Fortune 1000 companies, so you get a good sense of what’s happening on the internet.”
To read the original article, please click here.
In Spain the tendencies are similar.
According to LaRazon.es, in Spain, average internet usage has increase up to 79 hours per week. Platforms like Netflix and HBO are the protagonists. The radio as well has increased up to 7%.
“The increased use of the Internet translates into different trends in ‘ecommerce’, where food has taken the lead in fashion and now one in three users are starting to fill their fridge online.”
In addition, traffic on Social Media has increased a 55%, mostly on mobile devices. However, messaging applications are booming due to the need to communicate with family and friends.
Regarding real estate sector, although the market is paused, some have noticed an increase on website traffic. ElDiario.es highlights: “Emails from potential customers have fallen and the phone has stopped ringing. ‘Calls we no longer receive any, but we have many more visits to our websites. Internet traffic has increased approximately 80%'”.
In a few weeks, we will see what April tendencies were and how we can better understand the behaviour of the usage of online platforms. In the meantime, we will try to understand what comes after this hibernation period, the economy and our audience may not be the same as it was. New rules will be created. And fortunately, use this information and our experience with creativity and mutate our strategies for the “New Normal”.
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