According to EuroHot100, Malta's most popular website (Calculated by various cache and other traffic logs) is Malta Network Resources, for the 7th year running.

An Australian fast-food chain came in for criticism after head office management ordered the Malta-born franchise owner of a Sydney store to remove a nativity scene from his counter which included a model of baby Jesus, Mary and the Magi, a very traditional scene in Malta.

A dubious internet survey is out, according to today's papers. It places commercial sites di-ve and searchmalta on top, in response to the question “Which local website do you visit most often”.

It's not at all clear who were the respondents, what age group, how many there were at all. For all we know it could have been Maltacom employees (Maltacom owns both websites which came on top) and Maltacom could have sponsored the whole survey which would make it less than objective. Other websites fell under the 10% mark, it was said.

The survey is not publically accessible anywhere, also. Was it a free survey, or were respondents paid, for instance?

With regards to internet usage, these reports are at best dubious and should be ignored. Which sites were given as choices to the respondents? 1..xyz, 2..abc, etc. That would influence the results, too. Also, real internet usage is not something you can analyse complete, ever. Somewhat accurate reports can be obtained from server logs, but they will never be accurate. Use of caches at various ISP's, transparent ones too, means that many users will NEVER be counted. So the hunt for finding which site is most popular will never work, especially in Malta.

“Statistics can mislead: different sites attract different visitors; different surveys use different methodologies. Statistics like these, therefore, should only be used as very rough predictors. ” (Chuck Upsdell, Browser News)

Nowadays, commercial Maltese sites look much more like the covers of supermarket tabloids, with about as much content, many pictures and as much accuracy. Is this what we want to make the web like? Just some food for thought.

A photograph of the Norwich City FC laid for the last 32 years in the Mellieha Sanctuary of Our Lady.
Why?

This question was asked by the Norwich Evening News after Len Abel and his wife returned to Norwich from another visit of theirs to Malta with this photo (which was removed from public display this year).