Short overview of Czech internet market

Czech internet is as small and still unimportant as the Czech Republic is. Among other Middle-European markets it has one specifity. Czech internet is pretty much isolated and most key services are provided by Czech companies. Czechia and Russia are the only European countries where local search engine has highest share than Google. Usage of all other non-Czech services is low among "mainstream users" (in Czech internet jargon they are called BFU = Bloody Fucking Users, or Blbý Franta Uživatel). Let´s take a look at most important kind of services and share of most important providers.

Search Engines

For research we could use NetMonitor - official monitoring of visits using cookies. Its statistics are pretty accurate. However, if we want to find more about share of search engines, this source is not the best, there are better ways how to get required numbers. Probably the best source - although not perfect, of course - are refferals from Toplist.cz, kind of Google Analytics for mainly smaller sites. Aggregated stats in graph you can find at vyhledavace.chose.cz. Although stats for Google are divided into separate numbers for google.cz, google.com, google.sk etc., from first look you can see the dominance of Seznam - the biggest Czech portal. Its share is around 38 % (of all refferals problably - not only search engines refferals), Google has around 14 %, smaller Czech portal Centrum has around 2,5 %. Numbers for another portal - Atlas - seems senseless, it should have around 1-2 %.

Portal packs

More information could be get from graphs which I made for my article at Czech IT webzine Lupa.cz. I think that it´s not necessary to comment them widely, but I should explain what they show. In each segment I used two graph - one for UV (unique visitors), one for PV (page views). Graphs I used to find out changes of market lay-out in past year, so there are only few chosen website ni comparison (but all important) and total is always 100 %. I used datas from NetMonitor, some servers joined that system lately so the graphs are "strange" in first part (that explain the "steps"). Numbers are for period of month. So firstly pack stats for all services of main providers together.


As you can see, Seznam is absolutely dominant. Second is Centrum, third and fourth Atlas and iDnes. iDnes is mostly "only" news portal.

Homepages

These graphs are interesting because they shows numbers of only four single pages, homapages of the four biggest Czech portals. That means that they are pretty accurate, without any "magic with numbers".



Maps

The most innovative segment of Czech internet were online maps, this year.


Webmails

Number of users of Yahoo Mail or Hotmail is very low in Czechia, some people use Gmail, but no numbers available. I expect 5 % share of Gmail at very maximum.




News

These graphs are almost worthless, all portals bundles different things into their "news packs" so you have no chance to compare them exactly. Novinky is news magazine of Seznam, Zprávy is owned by iDnes (it´s a website of second Czech newspaper owned by owner of iDnes).


Social networks

About social networks there is one interesting issue. It´s the only segment where Seznam is not absolutely dominant. Formerly leader Xchat (owned by Centrum) is continuously decreasing and Atlas is almost inactive in that area. But independent social network Líbímseti is rapidly growing and it´s possible that it could even surpass Seznam´s Lidé.





So consider this spot as my introduction. From time to time I would like to publish here some (in my view) interesting things about Czech internet. I must express thanks to József that he allowed my to use for it his blog. And - of course :-) - excuse my English.