Web Use Survey - April 1998

Purpose: included to show how the Internet use evolved prior to the first dot com bubble. Initially there was a view that "old folk didn't surf". The facts didn't support this even then.

The 50-and-over age group, highly attractive to advertisers because of its generally high disposable income, surfed 19 percent longer than all other Web users combined during April, and spent nearly an hour more on the Web last month than they did in March, the survey said.

Women over 50 used the Internet on an average of 9.9 days in April, 20 percent more than in March, according to the survey.

"This is evidence that the Web is becoming increasingly mainstream and is no longer just the domain of the
technologically sophisticated," said Tim Cobb, president of RelevantKnowledge, in Atlanta.

The top 10 overall domains by average days viewed for Americans age 50 and older during April were (from 1-10)
pointcast.net, infobeat.com, hotmail.com, att.net, search.com, washingtonpost.com, ebay.com, ESPN Sportszone.com, netscape.com and microsoft.com, the survey showed.

The top 10 overall domains by duration in minutes for American women age 50 and over during April were (1-10),
previewtravel.com, hotmail.com, nasa.gov, msn.com, yahoo.com, marthastewart.com, cnn.com, earthlink.net,
bluemountain.com and hallmarkconnections.com, according to the survey.

The top 10

In the category of most highly-trafficked individual Web sites for all Americans during April, the top 10 sites were:

1. Yahoo.com, with about 32 million users
2. Netscape.com, with about 21 million users
3. AOL.com, with about 19 million users
4. Microsoft.com, with about 18 million users
5. Excite.com, with about 16 million users
6. Geocities.com, with about 14 million users
7. Infoseek.com, with about 13 million users
8. Lycos.com, with about 11 million users
9. MSN.com, with about 10 million users
10. Altavista.digital.com, with about 7 million users

A full explanation of the company's survey methodology is offered on
http://www.relevantknowledge.com/Products/methodology.html