Yesterday I spoke at the excellent Blogging for Business conference in London. In answer to a question about the demographics, I provided some statistics on the profile of visitors to blog websites. I received a number of follow up questions about the data so thought I'd post the data here with some additional detail.

Blogs attract slightly more males than average for the UK online population and skew slightly young. Visitors to blog websites are also 34% more likely to be from London than average, as illustrated in the image below. The Mosaic Groups Urban Intelligence, Welfare Borderline and Municipal Dependency are all over-represented on blogs versus the online population indicating again that blog visitors skew young and cover all income groups.

Region Breakdown of UK Visitors to Blogs and Personal Websites, Four weeks to 31 March 2007. Representation Index Against the Online Population.

However, as I pointed out yesterday, looking at the category statistics can be a bit misleading. Depending on the blog, the demographic profile of visitors to blogs can vary dramatically. The top blog websites based on share of UK visits are free blog hosting websites such as Blogger, MySpace Blogs and Windows Live Spaces.

Let's look at three of the most popular individual blogs, based on UK visits. The Superficial, the celebrity gossip blog, attracts younger visitors from Wales and the West Midlands. In particular, those aged 18-24 are twice as likely as average for the online population to be on The Superficial website.

Engadget visitors are more likely to be aged 25-35 or 45-55 and be from the West Midlands or Northern Ireland. Visitors to Guido Fawkes' blog are 95% less likely to be 18-24 and 55% more likely to be 45-55. They are also more likely to be from London, Yorkshire and the Humber or Scotland.

Depending on the topic and the blog, demographics can vary widely for blogs. There is no "typical" blog reader just as there is no typical television viewer.

Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins is VP of Research for Hitwise UK. This piece was first posted on Hitwise Analyst blog here.