Overall, four-out-of-five respondents (83.5%) said in a typical week they visit more sites today than compared to a year ago. In fact, fully 41.2% of respondents say they are visiting many more sites today compared to a year ago - female respondents (46.8%) are more likely than male respondents (37.3%) to say this. As expected, new web users say they are visiting more sites today than a year ago - but so are experienced web users with 39.8% of respondents with four or more years of web experience saying they are visiting more websites today than a year ago.
Let the Reach and Frequency debate resume!
Not surprisingly, search engines and word-of-mouth are the most common ways web users hear about new websites - with 61.3% and 50.8% of respondents citing these sources. Other sources for new websites include hyperlinks from other web pages (47.8%), magazines/newspapers (29.9%), Internet portals (26.5%), television commercials (19.1%), books (18.1%), signatures at end of email messages 9.8%, and Usenet newsgroups 6.4%.
The Burst survey also provided some interesting demographic stats. Sixty-five percent of respondents said staying in contact with others though email and chat is a reason they use the Internet. Other reasons to use the web include; gathering information for personal needs (54.9%), entertainment (51.4%), education (50.4%), keeping up with current events (45.1%), and wasting time (37.2%). Also, the 25-34 year segment is significantly more likely than any other age segment to say they use the Internet to keep up with current events. Also, older age segments (35+ years) are much more likely than respondents under the age of 35 years to say they use the Internet as a resource for gathering information on personal needs as well as product information gathering.