Leslie van Ruyskensvelde

According to a recent study, Canterbury is the top digital city in the UK having the highest rate of users in the country.

The study, carried out by Experian Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service looked at 1.4 million websites visited by people and ranked the percentage of visits to websites per head of population in a given area.

James Murray, Marketing and Research Analyst for Experian Hitwise, explains: “We can isolate where in the UK those visitors are coming from and see exactly what types of websites people are looking at.”

The research, carried out between July 2010 and 18 September 2010, revealed that 1.44% of all UK visits came from Canterbury, despite the fact that the town contains only 0.75% of the UK’s population.

More surprising, Canterbury is first before major cities such as London and Aberdeen. “We don’t always know the reason why one place has a higher representation than another,” said Mr. Murray.

Further figures in the study show that students and young single people consist of 60% of the daily use. The most popular websites visited are social networks, search, shopping and entertainment with online video and gaming sites scoring the highest number of consumers. The top websites include Google, Facebook and YouTube.

Mr. Murray added: “The release shows that, of the websites which are most represented for people from Canterbury, quite a high proportion are from gaming sites. Things like MMO Champion, Xbox360Achievments, Gamestation and World of Warcrafts Wiki.

“Gaming is certainly something that you would tend to associate with a slightly younger demographic and also with students.”

If students are one of the main factor for these statistics, Experian Hitwise’s analyses shows that one in five residents belong to an older group. These tends to have strong roots in their community and are mainly in their 60s with grandchildren. Bingo, yachting, boating, fishing and golf are successful choices of websites in that group.