Good news for Web log publishers with aspirations of making money off their sites -- compared to the average Internet user,
visitors to Web logs, or blogs, tend to be younger and to belong to a wealthier household, a study has found.
Blog visitors are also more likely to shop online and to connect to the Internet using a broadband connection, according to
the study "Behaviors of the Blogosphere" conducted by comScore Networks. Unsurprisingly, blog visitors are also more active
online, visiting almost twice as many Web pages as the average Internet user.
ComScore defines blogs as "mostly amateur online diaries." By unique visitors, FreeRepublic.com ranked first in the first
quarter, followed by DrudgeReport.com, Fleshbot.com, Gawker.com and Fark.com. By visits, DrudgeReport came in first, followed
by Fark.com, FreeRepublic.com, Gawker.com and Slashdot.org.
"ComScore found that blog visitors represent a demographically attractive advertising audience. Blog visitors are disproportionately
likely to be affluent, young and broadband-enabled," reads the study, published this week.
Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of US$75,000 or more, and are 30 percent
more likely to live in households headed by someone between the ages of 18 and 34, the study found.
During the first quarter, the average blog visitor viewed 77 percent more Web pages than the average Internet user, and spent
23 hours per week online, compared with 13 hours per week for the average user, according to the study. Regarding e-commerce
behavior, blog visitors are 30 percent more likely to shop online than the average user.
Proof of the rising popularity of blogs is that about 50 million U.S. Internet users (about 30 percent of all U.S. Internet
users) visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005, up 45 percent compared with 2004's first quarter, according to the
study.
The most popular type of blog is the political one, according to the study, which was sponsored by blogging software and service
vendor Six Apart Ltd. and by blog publisher Gawker Media.
The study was based on comScore's tracking of the online activity of over 2 million Internet users.
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