The 40 most-visited-by-me sites of 2013

How much time do I spend on the internet when I'm at home, and what am I looking at? A few years ago I decided to set myself that very question, and to answer it I stuck a clock on my browser. Unfortunately, I forgot to collate the first couple of years' stats. But I've since tweaked the counter a few times, and this year I've actually remembered to crunch the stats therein. The list consists of my 50 most-visited domains, some of which I've combined because they amount to the same site, and one of which I've removed because it is buggy (I did not spend five days watching Channel 4, and the suggestion that I did seems to have stemmed from some corrupt data left in the file from the previous year, but their website should probably be in this list somewhere). Another note before I show you the list: for the first half of the year it was clocking stats from all open tabs, and in the second half it was limited to the active tab. Also omitted is browsing from any other platform except Opera (so my brief flirtation with Netflix is not listed as it took place in Firefox owing to compatibility issues).

Here, then, are my 40 most-visited sites (caveats already noted). For more information about a site, hover over the name.

		Total (h:m)	Total (d:h)	Daily av. (m:s)	%
	OVERALL	1254:00	52d 6h	3h 26:00
1	Tweetdeck	382:57	15d 23h	62:57	31
2	Wikipedia	72:02	3d	11:50	5.7
3	Old Reader	71:54	3d	11:49	5.7
4	Blogger (my 'blogs)	59:37	2d 12h	9:48	4.8
5	YouTube	57:19	2d 9h	9:25	4.6
6	Facebook	52:41	2d 12h	8:40	4.2
7	BBC	41:36	1d 18h	6:50	3.3
8	Google	37:18	1d 33h	6:08	3
9	Google Maps	28:51	1d 12h	4:45	2.3
10	Twitter	18:15		3:00	1.5
11	(Local Host)	17:02		2:48	1.4
12	Historic Digimap	9:26		1:33	0.8
13	Splendid Chaps	8:03		1:19	0.6
14	A/V Woman	7:49		1:17	0.6
15	Alveley Historical Society	7:11		1:11	0.6
16	The Guardian	6:24		1:03	0.5
17	jobs.york.ac.uk	5:25		53s	0.4
18	TVCatchup	5:08		51s	0.4
19	Bing Maps	4:34		45s	0.4
20	Sporcle	4:25		44s	0.4
21	RightMove	4:10		41s	0.3
22	(Router)	3:38		36s	0.3
23	subjectguides.york.ac.uk	3:20		33s	0.3
24	Lawrence Miles ('blogs)	3:17		32s	0.3
25	Sheffield Planning Applications	3:08		31s	0.2
26	NRK	2:50		28s	0.2
27	Lady V London	2:48		28s	0.2
28	BBC Good Food	2:47		27s	0.2
29	Know Your Meme	2:30		25s	0.2
30	Pinterest	2:27		24s	0.2
31	Amazon	2:21		23s	0.2
32	Flickr	1:52		18s	0.1
33	Out Of This World ('blog)	1:47		18s	0.1
34	The Golden Era of GP Racing	1:43		17s	0.1
35	Tattuinardoelasaga	1:41		17s	0.1
36	thetrainline.com	1:40		16s	0.1
37	IMDb	1:39		16s	0.1
38	Gizoogle	1:36		16s	0.1
39	University of York	1:28		14s	0.1
40	Doctor Macro	1:27		14s	0.1

So there you go. The above list accounts for about 85% of my browsing (a stat that includes the otherwise omitted Channel 4 entry for necessary mathematical reasons). The colour-banding groups things together semi-thematically. What do we learn from all of this? That I like maps? We already knew that (or I did anyway). 

To get an idea of what this is telling us, we need another data-set. My other data-set is anecdotal. It is me remembering what sites I used most about a decade ago. About a decade ago I mainly used Google, Wikipedia, BBC and The Guardian. Those sites constituted a Big Four, with my own content probably filling in a fifth slot. The rest of my internet activity can be discovered from the array of bookmarks I still have in my browser from Them Days: home-made websites (largely replaced by 'blogs now, and consumed via my feed reader). Gone now are the days when I sat grazing the news at The Grauniad and the Beeb (International Version). Twitter feeds now deliver that news to me. But the difference is not as radical as if we roll back the clock another five years, when my most-used sites would've been Alta-Vista and Yahoo! We've come a long way since the Web Ring. We've gone full-circle and found ourselves back in Usenet, but with a 140 character limit.

I'm now going to clear the stat counter and hopefully come back in another 12 months to do some proper, more meaningful analysis of my browsing trends. Between those things, I need to do the pots and make some tea.