Last week I was wandering around some sites doing some research for a client, and up popped a window for taking part in the Internet User Monitor research. This is a UK research project by Forrester Research that has been running since 1988. As a long time Internet user, I've filled out a good few of these in my time (the when did you start using the Internet question always makes me laugh).

However, this year's version was fascinating as they are trying to define many many more things that people do on the internet than they used to. Here are some examples of the questions:

 
Seems to me there are a lot more things that you could possibly do online than you could in 1998. I don't know exactly when it was asked, but one of the questions I remember was "Have you changed your home page in your browser?". Somehow "maintaining a profile on a social networking site" seems a lot more sophisticated in terms of usage. Even looking at the questions compared to some of those from last year shows an increasing sophistication.

As a SEO company, Vertical Leap worries more about the search-savviness of the potential visitors to our client sites, and I think that we can probably conclude that this has increased alongside other improvements in Internet usage. However, you'll notice that "How often do you visit a search engine?" is not one of these questions.

There were obviously a lot of other questions about demographics, online purchases and also financial use of the web, but the above were the ones that caught my eye particularly. I will certainly look forward to seeing the results when they are published in due course.