Sex, always sex

Netratings measures Internet behavior at work for the first time in German-speaking countriesBy Markus Knöpfli The surfing behavior of German Internet users at work is only slightly different from that at home. Whether at home or at work, the most time is spent on e-shopping and entering the keyword sex in search engines. This is according to initial data from the Netratings Workpanel for the month of July.
To clear up any misunderstandings right at the start: although Nielsen/Netratings Germany can now also measure Internet use in the workplace, the institute is not in a position to publish separate figures. The reason: According to Stefan Raum, Head of Nielsen/Netratings Germany, the current Workpanel with around 600 panelists is representative enough to make general statements about Internet use at the workplace. However, the number of cases is far from sufficient to provide information on the use of individual domains or even sites. For comparison: Internet use on home PCs in Germany is measured at around 4900 panel participants - and by late summer this figure is expected to rise to between 6300 and 7000.
The consequence of this: Nielsen/Netratings now publishes two types of data, that of the pure home panel and a mixture of home and work panel. Although Nielsen/Netratings also wants to further expand the work panel (target: 1000 panelists), Raum dashes hopes of pure work panel data: "That won't happen, because it would be too complex and too expensive." As many companies fear for their data security, it is very difficult to obtain permission to measure from company bosses or IT managers.
Otherwise, however, the Workpanel is in no way inferior to the Homepanel, says Raum. Both the recruitment of panelists and the measurement of usage are carried out using a standardized method. Measurements are taken using software installed on the panel participant's PC, which delivers the collected data simultaneously to a mainframe computer. Based on monthly interviews, Nielsen/Netratings assumes that 34.6 million people in Germany have Internet access at home. A further 4.8 million also or only have Internet access at work.
What unites men and women is sought first
According to the data collected in July, the mixed panel data differs from that of the pure home panel as follows: 19.5 million people used the internet from home - for 9 hours and 4 minutes each. The mixed panel, on the other hand, shows 24 million active users who surfed for an average of 14 hours and 9 minutes. This means that the Internet was used for an average of around 5 hours during working hours - a good half as long as during leisure time.
It is striking that the same domains can be found in the top 20 in both panels, even occupying an identical order in the first nine reach ranks. Only in the lower ranks are slight shifts noticeable. All of these domains show an increase in visitors of 25% (t-online.de) to 50% (yahoo.com) in the mixed panel compared to the home panel.
Ironically, the electronic shopping centers ebay.de and amazon.de as well as the portal lycos.de (ranks 3, 6, 7) are among the domains that benefited the most with growth of between 38% and 42%. This is further accentuated if we consider not only the reach but also the duration of use. While the classic search engines in the mixed panel increased by 18% (yahoo.de) to 26% (google .de), ebay.de only increased by a good 5%, albeit at a very high level, and lycos.de saw an increase in usage of a full 85%.
If you multiply the usage times by the difference in reach of the two panels, you end up with the following ranking: Lycos.de is used by all German Internet users combined for a total of 271 hours during working hours alone and ebay.de for 251 hours. According to a lycos.de press release, the portal is most frequently searched for information on sex. If only German employers knew that...
Top 20 domains Germany

July 2002
Home Home + Work
Rank Domain visitor reach Ø dwell time/ Domain visitor reach Ø dwell time/
in 1000 in % Visitors in 1000 in % Visitors
 1 t-online.de 10 357 53.01 0:48:38 t-online.de 13 037 54.27 0:48:18
 2 google.de 7 322 37.48 0:16:11 google.de 10 053 41.85 0:19:16
 3 ebay.de 7 157 36.63 1:46:18 ebay.de 9 874 41.10 1:51:51
 4 microsoft.com 6 018 30.81 0:07:10 microsoft.com 8 524 35.48 0:08:26
 5 web.de 5 499 28.15 0:34:39 web.de 7 546 31.41 0:48:35
 6 amazon.de 4 503 23.05 0:09:35 amazon.de 6 395 26.62 0:10:07
 7 lycos.de 4 191 21.45 0:12:02 lycos.de 5 783 24.07 0:22:16
 8 yahoo.de 3 999 20.47 0:28:57 yahoo.de 5 375 22.38 0:34:14
 9 freenet.de 3 977 20.36 0:15:08 freenet.de 5 285 22.00 0:19:17
10 msn.de 2 946 15.08 0:05:43 msn.com 4 279 17.81 0:16:43
11 msn.com 2 921 14.95 0:14:28 msn.de 4 237 17.64 0:06:38
12 rtl.de 2 821 14.44 0:15:42 google.com 4 137 17.22 0:04:39
13 google.com 2 789 14.28 0:03:42 rtl.de 3 793 15.79 0:14:48
14 gmx.net 2 583 13.22 0:22:41 yahoo.com 3 595 14.97 0:33:49
15 yahoo.com 2 386 12.21 0:28:08 gmx.net 3 569 14.86 0:27:47
16 aol.de 2 218 11.35 0:21:08 gmx.de 3 140 13.07 0:03:21
17 gmx.de 2 195 11.24 0:02:50 bahn.de 2 980 12.41 0:16:10
18 aol.com 2 041 10.45 0:06:02 aol.de 2 957 12.31 0:19:29
19 bahn.de 2 009 10.28 0:16:41 de.vu 2 848 11.86 0:02:16
20 de.vu 1 971 10,09 0:02:36 aol.com 2 839 11,82 0:07:47
Source: Nielsen/Netratings