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

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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

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  3. Watch Football Online says

    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. Dan says

    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. patrick says

    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. BullS says

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

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

  7. Michael says

    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

  9. glaxxon says

    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. Doug says

    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.

  12. Dan says

    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’