The top 50 websites come from Alexa. com (a subsidiary of Amazon. com), an online resource that calculates website traffic based on millions of their toolbar users. As daily internet traffic is changeable, this chart acts as an overall snapshot of the important websites in our lives. Social networks are dominant in the online league, with Bebo (4) and MySpace (7) ranking highly. According to the chart, in 2006 finding a gay partner online at Gaydar. ie (37) was more important than booking a flight with Ryanair (41), and BBC (6) was our first stop for news, not RTE (15). Property and banking are also highly important to the Irish internet user, with MyHome. ie (38), Daft (12), AIB (16) and Bank of Ireland (35) all placed in the top 50 most often visited sites.

Meanwhile, Ebay, which comes in at number nine, is receiving plenty more hits over the festive period as unsatisfied recipients of Christmas presents attempt to sell on their unwanted gifts.

Unopened PlayStation PSPs, CD players, Marks and Spencer tops, earrings and mp3 players are all currently listed as "unwanted Christmas presents" at knock-down prices.

While not yet featuring in the top 50, no other Irish website courted as much controversy, or as many laughs, in 2006 as New York-based blog Blogorrah. com.

The site, updated around 10 times a day, poked fun at Irish politicians, models, sportsmen and musicians and, towards the end of the year, earned itself over 100,000 hits daily. Partly responsible for the wider distribution of the 'Twink Tapes', and the resurrection of an old INN interview with model Andrea Roche, which resulted in the former Miss Ireland contacting her solicitor, Blogorrah has captured the imagination of the surfing Irish in a similar way to popular US gossip sites Pink Is The New Blog and TMZ. com.

Published by John Ryan's Gatsby Publishing and edited by former Sunday Tribune columnist Derek O'Connor, Blogorrah's irreverent content enjoys access to photographs and material that doesn't usually make the newspapers, not that that has stopped a few media outlets 'borrowing' stories from the site. Among other Irish bloggers of note to watch out for in 2007 are Slugger O'Toole, Twenty Major, In Fact Ah and Blather.

IRISH LIFE ONLINE: THE TOP 50 WEBSITES

1. Google Search engine 2. Yahoo. com Search engine with email and chatroom add-ons 3. msn. com Hotmail, instant messaging, many users' default homepage 4. Bebo. com Most popular social network with 800,000 Irish pages.

5. YouTube. com User-submitted video library 6. BBC. co. uk News, sport, weather 7. Myspace. com Largest social network in world 8. Wikipedia. org Encyclopedia built with usersubmitted content 9. eBay. com Irish online auctioning 10. Blogger. com Free weblog publishing tool 11. Eircom. net Free webspace and email 12. Daft. ie Property. Search for sales, lettings, roommates and tenants 13. Boards. ie Popular Irish bulletin board site, offering web hosting, chat rooms, and news group access 14. Amazon. com Books and more 15. RTE. ie News, sport, radio and programme information 16. AIB. ie Allied Irish Bank 17. Imdb. com The Internet Movie Database 18. Flickr Photo and picture galleries, chat and social networking 19. 6park. com Chinese forum, frequently blocked by Chinese censors.

Driven by overseas students 20. Vodafone. ie Mobile phone operator 21. Politics. ie Irish political news, discussion and resources 22. Aerlingus. com The national airline 23. Megaupload. com Free "le transferring website, mainly used for uploading and downloading music and videos 24. Ireland. com The Irish Times and email 25. Unison. ie Online edition of Independent newspapers 26. Draugiem. lv Latvian social networking site 27. Rapidshare. com Hosting site similar to megaupload 28. Dell. com Computer company 29. adultfriendfinder. com Personal ads, dating and chat 30. carzone. ie Speci"cations and comparisons on new cars sold in Ireland 31. Premierleague. com Of"cial site of FA Premiership 32. SkySports. com Sports news 33. Onet. pl Polish email, blogging, forum, news and entertainment site 34. Apple. com Apple Computer's homepage 35. 365online. com Online service for Bank of Ireland customers 36. Rediff. com The number one Indian portal 37. Gaydar. ie Gay personals, chat website 38. MyHome. ie Property website 39. Google. pl Polish Google 40. Sky. com Sports, entertainment, news, digital television services 41. Ryanair. com The discount airline 42. Jobs. ie Job listings and CV database service 43. XE. com Currency converter 44. Baidu. com Chinese language search engine 45. Entertainment. ie Irish entertainment guide 46. DCU. ie Dublin City University 47. iol. ie Ireland Online 48. Photobucket. com Image hosting website 49. Ticketmaster. ie Online ticket booking 50. irlgov. ie Portal to all government sites >> duplicates or variations of website addresses were omitted