Chrome Users Most “New-Version” Friendly among Top 3 Browsers

Browser Fragmentation is a well-known problem for many web developers. Optimizing one’s site not just for a specific browser, but multiple versions of the same browser, can cause sites to look perfect in one browser but slightly “off” in another.

While both Firefox and Chrome have adopted rapid-release schedules, and created a defaulted setting that always updating when a new version is released, these problems are far more mitigated on these browsers. Internet Explorer, however, remains fragmented, thanks in large part to having three different versions of its operating system, spanning nearly a decade of work, still in heavy use (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7).

To quantify this, Chitika Insights took a look at the version breakdown of the three most popular desktop browsers to see what percentage of each use the most recent version (MSIE 9, Firefox 10, and Chrome 17). Traffic consists of all US and Canadian traffic, from March 1^st until March 7^th, 2012. What we found is that Chrome continues to have the least fragmented browser distribution, with over 72% of Chrome impressions to the Chitika network coming from Chrome 17.

What does this mean?

As Chitika has shown in the past, Internet Explorer means ad revenue, but slower updating on MSIE has led to a very fragmented environment for web design, making this market segment important, but tricky. With Microsoft instituting auto-updates in 2012, it looks like a problem on the cusp of resolving itself.

However, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, both still very popular web browsers, will not receive this auto-updating feature. While Microsoft continues efforts to get people off of IE 6 and 7 in favor of their new versions, an initiative championed by many, these two browsers continue to make up a large portion of all Internet Explorer traffic. Marketers and publishers also should heed these developments, as a less fragmented market will free up resources for site and product development.

While auto-updating has its clear benefits, one of the main ones is potentially very useful to the people Microsoft is trying to gain: automatic security updates. With a reputation of having poor security measures, primarily as a result of the bad publicity that Internet Explorer 6 has received over the years, Microsoft has a way to go to re-establish the viability of MSIE to the crowd that has already left to use Firefox or Chrome.  Will these auto-updates yield returns in the form of higher usage? Check back with Chitika Insights for future details.