UKOM Data Report: June 2012

While Summer has traditionally been associated with a dip in internet consumption, the tedious British weather made sure that the nation’s internet habits were not affected in June. According to data recently released by UKOM, June saw the UK’s online population hit its highest level yet.

Figures from the online measurement company show that a total of 43 million users were online throughout the month, with 41.5 million of those accessing the internet falling in to the ‘work and home’ category.

This particular base of users has grown by over 5% on June 2011. The previous height hit by work and home users was 40.7 million in January 2012.

Overall, UK activity saw growth, though plenty of the internet’s big names and brands saw a drop in users over the month.

In June, older users made up the biggest slice of the pie with 31% of the online population aged 50 or older. Further demographic breakdowns can be ran in the UKOM Universe Profile here.

Brands

Over half of the top ten brands saw a slight fall in traffic, with online auction site eBay seeing the biggest actual fall (down 626,000 users MoM), slipping down one place. Microsoft saw the biggest boost of the top ten, moving up one place and bagging an extra 541,000 users from the previous month.

Firmly in the top spot is ubiquitous search giant Google. The number one search tool attracted a unique audience of 36.5 million users from the UK in June, down 0.6% from the previous month. The average time each person spent on the site also fell, down 14 minutes to one hour and 31 minutes.

Shopping king Amazon witnessed a good month, jumping up 372,000 users to a total of 20.7 million for June.

Online Newspapers

Although the 10 most popular online newspapers held on to the same rankings in May, eight of the sites lost users in June. There was good news for The Guardian, which attracted a further 391,000 users (6%) to the site – however, users spent less time, down four minutes. Once again the dominant force remained confidently in first place, tipping over the eight million user mark for the month.

Hardest hit was The Independent in fifth place, down 16% – an actual loss of nearly half a million users. Telegraph fell below the six million mark but still boasted 5.7 million users for June. London Evening Standard (which fell 123 places overall) lost 15% of its users but still managed to hang in the top ten newspaper sites list.

Social

Facebook saw little change in June, hanging on to 28 million users. The UK’s second most popular social tool, Blogger, attracted 18 million less users, highlighting the popularity of the ever-present top site. The world’s most famous social network had a 65% reach across the online universe. The average pages viewed per person dropped significantly, down from 741 in May to 597 in June.

Blogger saw the biggest jump out of the top ten – up half a million users, resulting in a total of 10.9 million users. The micro-blogging tool captured a 25% reach, with each user spending an average of 12 minutes on the site. The weeks before their mutual break-up, things were getting awkward for Twitter and LinkedIn. Both sites lost users with Twitter taking the biggest fall. The site was down 7.3% MoM, translating into a loss of over half a million actual users.

Further information and reports can found in the Online database.