Internet usage doubles to nearly 1 million users

THE number of Irish adults accessing the internet has almost doubled to one million, according to a survey.

The most popular sites are Yahoo, which has 535,000 regular readers and Eircom.net which has 422,000.

RTÉ’s’ website and the Irish Times’s Ireland.com have similar levels of hits with 116,000 and 115,000 readers apiece.

The Joint National Internet Research (JNIR) figures were compiled by Dublin company Monitrak.

According to Monitrak director Emmet Kelly, people have realised the capacity for research on health issues, houses, jobs and holidays.

“People are now searching for jobs and houses online for hours,” he said.

The survey shows 26% of people have bought a flight online in the last six months.

The Iol.ie website has 102,000 readers and Ocean free.net has 90,000. Irishjobs.ie follows with 50,000, while Entertainment Ireland has 40,000 readers.

The Thomas Crosbie group of websites, including Irishexaminer.com and the Post.ie, attract 35,000.

Internet usage had been calculated by recording the number of visits to a website or by planting cookies on a computer to track website use.

The JNIR survey focused on eight popular Irish websites to calculate usage.

The Institute of Advertising Practitioners said the survey’s results should boost internet advertising, which is just 1% of the market.

“We are far behind in broadband but not much in usage,” Mr Kelly said.