The wider world web

By The data team

THE internet looks like an adman’s dream. Counting clicks on a blinking banner ad is a doddle—but knowing where each click came from, and how many people are clicking, is harder than it appears, as a new report by GlobalWebIndex (GWI), a market-research firm, demonstrates. In a survey of 170,000 consumers in 32 countries, China and India are in the top three for Facebook users. Yet data from a click-counting firm, SimilarWeb, does not even place China in the top ten. The difference lies in what is being measured. The usual method is to monitor code placed on websites, or via browser plug-ins or mobile apps that report the origins and frequencies of visits. This records the internet-protocol addresses of the devices people are using, and assumes that each IP address represents a single user in its country of registration. But devices are widely shared. Another factor is the spread of virtual private networks or proxy servers, which make it possible to surf the web through a foreign server. Thus, Chinese users that circumvent the Great Firewall are not captured in the click-counters' stats. Yet GWI’s picture is also patchy. It misses out Africa entirely, except for South Africa. And a big and growing chunk of web visitors access the internet by mobile phones, whereas its survey (and the click-counting software) are optimised for desktop users. Knowing who is online, and where, is still some way off.