Earlier this year, developer Christopher Finke began collecting anonymous opt-in usage data from his "URL Fixer" browser add-on – software that automatically corrects common typos made by users when entering a Web address. With six months of data under his belt, Finke has decided to share some of the stats, showing the most popular URL entries and typos.
Unsurprisingly, the most commonly typed domain is facebook.com, which accounts for 9% of all URL entries among URL Fixer users. Google.com was a distant second, representing 3.3% of all domain entries though it's worth noting that many people don't actually visit Google's search page because modern browsers have some degree of search engine integration.
Other Google sites – YouTube and Gmail – accounted for 3.3% and 1.7% (1.1% for gmail.com and 0.6% for mail.google.com). Twitter.com was the fifth most popular domain with 1.1%, followed by yahoo.com and hotmail.com at 0.6%, and amazon.com and redit.com at 0.5%. Meanwhile, .com is the most popular TLD with 63% of the entries, versus 4% for .net, .org and .de.
The most frequently mistyped addresses are "faceboook.com" (three o's) and "goole.com" – though they don't happen very often. Faceboook.com is only entered once for every 7,930 times that someone types the site's address correctly. The stats show a near even divide between folks who enter Web addresses with "www." and those who don't (49.5% versus 50.5%).
The most frequently mistyped TLDs are .com\, .ocm, .con, .cmo, .copm, .xom, ".com,", .vom, .comn, .com', ".co,", .comj, .coim, .cpm, .colm, .conm, and .coom. It's worth noting that the data doesn't include bookmarked links or links that users click on – only domains that have been typed into the address bar. Head over to Finke's blog for additional figures and charts.