Study Of 7.5M Searches : What People Type In The Address Bar

2011 July 25
by Michael H. Berkens

A new blog post entitled “What Do People Type In The Address Bar” was published today by Chris Finke.

Its a study using the information Mr. Finke collected on 7.5 million searches.

You really should check out the full post but here are some of the results I found most interesting:

“(Note that this data does not include bookmarked links or links that users click on in websites. It is strictly domains that have been typed directly into the address bar).”

The most commonly typed domain is Facebook.com which was typed in almost three times as often as the second most popular domain, Google.com.

The top 10 domains account for 20% of all typed domains.

facebook.com 9% twitter.com 1.1% amazon.com 0.5%
google.com 3.3% mail.google.com 0.6% reddit.com 0.5%
youtube.com 3.3% yahoo.com 0.6%
gmail.com 1.1% hotmail.com 0.6%

The most popular TLD for typed domains is .com, followed by .org, .net, and .de.

.com 63%
.org 4%
.net 4%
.de 4%
.ru 2%
.hu 1%
.fr 1%
.co.uk 1%
.br 1%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top 17 TLD typos are all variations of .com. In order of frequency, they are .com, .ocm, .con, .cmo, .copm, .xom, “.com,”, .vom, .comn, .com’, “.co,”, .comj, .coim, .cpm, .colm, .conm, and .coom.

“The website that appears to benefit the most from users mistyping a legitimate URL is faceboook.com (count the o’s). It’s a scammy website set up to make you think that you have been chosen as a “Facebook Winner.” However, it is only typed once for every 7,930 times that someone correctly types facebook.com.”

49.5% of domains are typed with a leading “www.”.

How does domain length correlate with typing frequency?

Domain Length vs Frequency Graph

(Facebook is to thank for the spike at 12 characters.)

 

 

Like I said interesting.

Very Interesting

20 Responses leave one →
  1. 2011 July 25

    wow. thx for posting

  2. 2011 July 26

    Interesting results.

  3. 2011 July 26

    I wonder why Facebook has not taken this domain in a UDRP. Granted they have all the traffic they can handle, but I’m sure they will take that extra 1 in every 7,930 direct navs.

  4. 2011 July 26

    Hi,

    Maybe in a year or two or three… ‘.CO” will make it on to the “I meant to go there list” and not be stuck on the ‘typo’ list: ;)

    “The top 17 TLD typos are all variations of .com. In order of frequency, they are .com\, .ocm, .con, .cmo, .copm, .xom, “.com,”, .vom, .comn, .com’, “.co,”, .comj, .coim, .cpm, .colm, .conm, and .coom.”

    Only time will tell….

    Peace!

    ‘D’

  5. 2011 July 26

    Very interesting study it makes it clear why a good domain is needed if these ten branded memorable companies control twenty percent of the direct type in traffic.
    It would be interesting to see the stats for the remaining eighty percent of search and how many domains control that percentage maybe the web is smaller than we think.

  6. 2011 July 26

    What does that tell you…dot com is…..King

    dot ru? the Russians must force their citizens to type dot ru every second

  7. 2011 July 26

    I believe that Facebook is on the top because Google is set for most people as browsers homepage, as well as you can use browser address bar as Google search tool.

    But I am surprised that there are no adult related terms at the top for type in traffic

  8. 2011 July 26

    I enjoy what this piece says about the ever growing, strength of the .Org

  9. 2011 July 26

    Really interesting.

    Agreed there has been a good growth in .org with more and more companies registering the .org version along with the .com.

    As for faceboook.com, kaspersky blocks that for me so thats one more good reason to use a good anti-virus.

  10. 2011 July 26

    Nice study.

    I find it very weird that people type in mail.google.com instead of gmail.com.

    BTW, when I type in I type gmail then Ctrl+Enter.

  11. 2011 July 26

    If I have to type it, I type

    g.co

    and then click on the google banner

  12. 2011 July 26

    Hi,

    “The website that appears to benefit the most from users mistyping a legitimate URL is faceboook.com (count the o’s).”

    ___

    I am curious as to what the next 2-5 might be?

    I would have to think that…. “Gooogle” might have been pretty high up there, given the example above.

    ‘D’

  13. 2011 July 26

    Google owns 4 of the top 10 most typed domains.

  14. 2011 July 26

    Another advantage to the .co tld is the typo traffic.

  15. 2011 July 26

    Interesting info, thanks.

  16. 2011 July 27

    There are those who also type in the www as part of the domain name, ie wwwfacebook.com. I wonder what the stats are for this.

  17. 2011 July 27
    MHB permalink

    Malcolm

    That info was included in the post above

    49% of people type the www in

  18. 2011 July 27
    Josh permalink

    I think what he ment Michael is how many people type www without the . :)

  19. 2011 July 28

    Correct Josh.

    I’ve just checked Google Adwords and http://www.wwwfacebook.com gets 823,000 global monthly searches.
    p.s. the domain is unavailable and I would think it would be subject to copyright anyway.

    Thanks.

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