Distinctly Canadian Web Habits

This is a guest post by CommunityLend.com CEO Michael Garrity. We have profiled CommunityLend in the past.

There was a great piece in Saturday?s Globe and Mail outlining the contrast in the opinions of Canadians and Americans on who got the short end of the stick on the Free Trade Agreement. Predictably, both sides think the other is making out better (which in my own political experience is usually a good sign that things are about equal).

Reading the story did get me to thinking about other contrasts between ourselves and our American brethren, here on the week of both of our national patriotic celebrations. Further, as the CEO of a web company focused on the Canadian market, the story specifically got me thinking about the differences between our two nations? general usage patterns on the web.

To get some informational guidance on the issue, I went to Alexa and pulled the Top 100 most visited US sites and compared them to the Top 100 most visited Canadian sites. The net result of this imperfectly empirical study is what I?ll call ?Michael?s 5 Observations on National Web Behaviour? (just to give it a flashy and important title). I share these unique and clearly very important observations with you here in joint celebration of our National Holiday.

Observations on National Web Behaviour:

1. Plus ca change… : The clearest observation from the two lists is that we share most of the same online pastimes as our American web surfing neighbours, especially on the top end of the list. The majority of the top sites on both lists are predictably all the big names in Search, Social Networks, Auctions, File ?sharing?, Online Gaming and of course, Porn. Two notable Canadian distinctions; we tend to use the .ca extensions of the big names (e.g. google.ca) and our number one social network by a LONG SHOT is Facebook, coming in at the number 2 spot overall after the big G. MySpace, picks up the 11th spot, just beating …
    
2. Peace, Order and Good Government: The biggest surprise to me on the Canadian list is that the 13th spot is the Government of Canada website. Yes, you heard that correctly, the spot right after MySpace and eBay. My only explanation I have for this distinctly Canadian behaviour is that there are just so many departments and agencies and forms and services provided by the Canadian government that these sites have become an easier way to navigate it all. By comparison, the only US government service on the US Alexa list is USPS at number 72, presumably folks trying to locate their lost mail.
    
3. Mosaic Nation: They are the ?melting pot? and we are the ?mosaic?, or at least that?s the story we have been taught in school. The question is does it hold up online? The answer seems to be ?yes?. While 100% of sites on the US Alexa list are unilingual English, about 10% of Canadian Alexa 100 are sites that are specifically non-English (not to mention all of the sites that offer two languages as an option). Top on the list at number 56 is the French site Meteomedia.com and next is number 64, Sina.com, all in Chinese.
    
4. Minding the Books: Canadians top the world in usage statistics for online banking and it bears itself out at Alexa. The first Canadian bank comes in at the 21st spot (TD Bank) then they pepper the list until the end. Contrast this to the US list where the first bank comes in at the 38th spot (Bank of America). Yes, it seems we are a nation of book-keepers, bouncing actively between our Facebook profile updates and our bill payment screens. An exciting lot, us Canadians. Good news is that this should bode especially well if one had, say, an internet start up focused on the Canadian financial services space … say.
    
5. And Speaking of Start-Up?s: How do Canadian start-ups fare on the list? Well, not exceptionally well. There are three I can see. At 59 comes plentyoffish out of Vancouver, then at 91 it`s Toronto?s own redflagdeals.com, followed by Edmonton?s nexopia.com at 92. It should be noted here that there is certainly no shortage of criticism related to Alexa as an accurate measure of web usage so I?m sure other start ups will have at it for not being on the list. In the meantime, the list shows that there is still a lot to strive for in our community in getting the numbers up for our respective services.