Sunday, May 10, 2009

Where Australians Go Online

Last week I attended a presentation by Hitwise Asia Pacific on where Australians go online for information, particularly which government sites they visit.

March 2009 data shows the most popular online destinations for Australians are search engines and social networks. Australia has around 6500 government websites and these account for 2.4% of all Australian online visits - higher than the US (1.7%) and the UK (0.9%).

Federal Government websites account for 60% of all visits, State Government websites accounted for 29.7% visits while
6.2% of visits went to Local Government sites.

In March 2009 the most popular Federal Government websites were:
  • Bureau of Meteorology
  • Centrelink
  • Australian Taxation Office
  • Australian Job Search
  • Australian Taxation Office - Tax Agent Portal
The most popular State Government websites were:
  • Victoria Country Fire Authority
  • CityRail
  • Roads and Traffic Authority NSW
  • Better Health Channel
  • Transport Infoline
With the top Local Government sites being:
  • ourbrisbane.com
  • Brisbane City Council
  • Gold Coast City Council
  • City of Sydney.
  • City of Melbourne
As well as their own online efforts, social networks could provide a key opportunity for Governments to share information with Australians. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia all ranked in the top 15 websites that Australians visited this past March .

Referrals from social networks sites to government information are up 16.1% in the last 12 months.

Get the full report from Hitwise





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