The Google website is maintaining its lead in reach among Israel Internet surfers. A TIM survey by TNS Teleseker for the spring of 2005 indicates that 66.4% of surfers reported weekly reach to the site. The Walla! site was a distant second with 57.3%. The survey was conducted in June.
According to the survey, Israel has 3.4 million Internet surfers aged 13+, constituting 65% of the total population in this category, compared with 3.2 million in the preceding survey taken six months previously.
The survey included 1,700 Jewish Israeli Internet users aged 13+. Every 1% of reach in the June survey represents 34,000 users. The TIM survey employs the recall method; every respondent is asked, without prompting, whether he or she visited each of the websites in the survey, and, if so, when the last visit was. Google’s rating rose 7%, compared with 62% in the preceding survey, and 21%, compared with a survey of the corresponding period last year. Walla!’s rating changed little from the preceding survey, when it stood at 57.4%.
In third place was the “Yediot Ahronot” Hebrew daily’s Ynet website, with 44.1% weekly reach, compared with 41.9% in the preceding survey, and 38.6% in the survey of the corresponding period last year. The weekly reach of hotmail/msn.com/co.il, the websites of Internet Gold (Nasdaq: IGLD; TASE: IGLD) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), fell from 38.3% in the preceding survey to 35.8% in the current survey.
The figures in the survey reflect the proportion of Internet users in the sample who reported visiting the sites in question at least once a week during the period covered by the survey. The survey estimates reach, regardless of the number of clicks on a given site.
Maariv’s NRG website, whose reach rose from 20.2% in the survey of the corresponding period last year to 24.3% in the preceding survey, fell to 21.8% in the current survey.
Changes also occurred in the exposure rates of Internet shopping sites. The wallashops.co.il site, owned by Shocken group subsidiary Walla!, was again the leading shopping site in the current survey, although its weekly exposure rate fell to 6.7%, compared with 8.9% in the preceding survey.
The netaction.co.il site, owned by NetVision Ltd. (TASE: ), had a weekly exposure rate of 5.6%, compared with 5.9% in the preceding survey. The most significant decline in weekly reach was suffered by the p1000.co.il site, whose weekly exposure rate fell from 5.8% in the survey of the fall of 2004 to 3.9% in the current survey.
MSN Messenger was the most popular messaging program with a 35.4% weekly exposure rate, up from 33.1% in the preceding survey. ICQ was in second place with 31.3%, compared with 30.6% in the preceding survey. Yahoo! Messenger also gained ground, from 4.1% to 4.3%.
The leading group of Internet sites was the “Haaretz” group with 66.2% reach, the same as in the preceding survey, and compared with 62.9% in the survey from a year ago. The “Haaretz” group now includes Walla!, haaretz.co.il, themarker.co.il, AOL, and wallashops.co.il, while a year ago it included Walla!, haaretz.co.il, themarker.co.il, AOL, and IOL.
The reach of the MSN group also rose significantly, from 42.5% a ear ago to 58.9% in the current survey.
Since the rates appearing the survey are sample estimates, a confidence interval has been calculated for them, at a 1% level of significance. For example, the confidence interval for the weekly reach of the Yahoo! Internet site is 14-18.6%. The survey covers reach from any location: home, work, school, etc.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 21, 2005