I recently received an email from Google that compiles average traffic stats for web sites that opted to share their stats in the aggregate. It’s interesting to look at them – because it’s nice to know where most sites get their traffic or how much time most people spend on the average web site. So I wanted to share some of the info with you – except that I wanted to add a caution about thinking of this info as average. It’s the average from web sites that will willing to share data. I suspect that there are a disproportionate number of nonprofit, educational and maybe government web sites in the mix. Even in the aggregate, I think businesses are shy to share this sort of info. (Also the info was gathered from Nov 1, 2010 to Feb 1, 2011.)

So take it with a grain of salt, but here you go…

Visitor Experience:
Pages per Visit: 4.5
Bounce Rate: 47% (folks who leave the site immediately)
Average Time on Site: 5:23

Traffic Sources
Direct Traffic: 36.8% (people who type in the URL or bookmark site)
Referral: 19.4%
Search Engine: 28%
Other: 15.8%

Probably more interesting if you too have a web site – but hopefully worth the read.