Press Release 24/03/2009

FAMILY – INFORMATION SOCIETY SURVEY – Websites 4th quarter 2008

Virtual social networks and job seeking websites burst into the top 20 most visited sites

The digital press continued to head the ranking, followed by youtube.com in third place and the website of the Basque Government, euskadi.eus, in fourth

Special mention should be made of the appearance of tuenti.com, a virtual social network launched in 2006, among the most visited websites in the fourth quarter 2008, when it was in eleventh place with 18,600 hits and 2% of the share, according to Eustat data.

Job seeking websites also recorded a notable increase in the number of hits. These sites include inem.es, which shot up from 105th to 33rd place in the ranking, and "lanbide.net", which rose 16 places from 35th to 19th in the table.

Yet again this quarter, regular Internet users in the Basque Country, first of all, opted for the websites offered by the media, followed by those relating to leisure, institutions, electronic banking and travel.

By province, Alava Internet users favoured tourism websites, banking and institutional sites were most popular with users in Gipuzkoa and courier sites with people in Bizkaia

The website with the most hits continued to be “elcorreodigital.com”, as 12.3% of the total Internet users visited that space, which came to a total of 117,100 hits. In terms of hits, this was followed by the "diariovasco.com” (7%) and marca.es (3.8%) newspapers.

After the media websites, the most popular sites were leisure-related sites, such as “youtube.com”, with 54,400 hits, which accounted for 5.7% of the total. The presence of hotmail.com was also noteworthy and was mentioned by 4.4% of Internet users.

The Basque Public Administration and electronic banking continued to be among the most visited websites in the fourth quarter of 2008

The Basque Government website (euskadi.eus) was in a key position, as it accounted for 4.5% of the total hits and was visited 42,700 times, which was 14,900 more than in the second quarter of the same year. The website rose to fourth place in the ranking.

The sites run by banks for their customers are also among the most popular sites: “kutxa.net”, with 3.8% of the total hits, “bbk.es” with 2.1% and “cajalaboral.es” with 1.7%.

Special mention should also be made of the entry of ocioturismo.com and musicasi.com into the table, as they entered straight in at 31st and 35th place, respectively.



97.6% of Internet users in the Basque Country use “Google” as the search engine

With regard to search engines, Internet users in the Basque Country prefer Google, which has ousted the others. 97.6% of this collective, which stands at over 919,000 Internet users aged 15 and over, use Google, compared to 2% that resort to Yahoo and 0.4% that use other search engines. The number of people using Google increased by 18,000 people in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Table 1. List of the 20 most visited websites by Internet users. 2nd and 4th quarters of 2008

Source: EUSTAT

For further information:

Basque Statistics Office C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz Tlf:+34-945-01 75 00 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01 E-mail: eustat@eustat.es Contact: Pilar Martínez Rollón Tel:+34-945-01 75 97 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01 Online press releases: www.eustat.es Databank: www.eustat.eus/bancopx/english/indice.asp