At Octopart, we spend a lot of time looking at data. Part data. Traffic data. Supply chain data. You get the idea. With so much raw data available, it can be tempting to draw conclusions about what we think the data might be saying. We’ve always been very careful to avoid doing that, however. After all, we strive to deliver open and accurate part data on the site and pushing specious analysis wouldn’t do our reputation any favors.

Plus, there are also many ways to look at data and come up with different answers to the same question. Such as, “What is the most popular part on Octopart?” (How do you define popularity? Is it the part with the most views? Clicks? Is it fair to compare the popularity of a capacitor to… well, anything else?)

You could spend days debating these questions, so for the sake of this blog, we’ve decided to take just a few very specific questions and answer them. When possible, we will explain the rationale behind the measures we chose.

That having been said, without further ado, our look back on 2019:

How many searches happened on Octopart last year?

In 2018 we saw a jump of 5 million more searches performed on Octopart when compared to 2018, with the most frequently occuring search term being “capacitor”. When we say “searches performed” we are really saying, “total number of times a search results page loaded”. Meanwhile, we defined “most common search term” as “the word that showed up in queries the most”. The term “capacitor” could have been a search query on its own or part of a query string like, “10uF capacitor”.

How many parts were added to Octopart in 2019?

As new parts are released they’re often added to Octopart shortly after. In 2019, 6,045,364 parts were added to our database. Not all of these parts are new, though. Many parts get added to the site when new distributors or manufacturers list their inventory on Octopart, often allowing for entire families of parts to become searchable with our algorithm for the first time.

For the above, “parts added” should be self explanatory. However, “part data” is a little less obvious. When we say “part data” what we mean is that specific, useful part information has been added to an existing part in our database that previously had no such information. Why is this stat worth knowing? Individual part pages are transformed from mostly empty pages that can only be searched by MPN to data-rich parts that can be searched and discovered without knowing the exact part number.

Which category of parts saw the most growth?

Category with the Most Parts Added - Card Edge Connectors (334,961 added)

In terms of number of parts added in the last year, Card Edge Connectors saw the most growth in 2019 with 334,961 parts.

Which part categories had the most views?

Ceramic Capacitors lead the pack as the part category with the most views in 2019. Followed by Chip SMD Resistors, Circular Connectors, Connectors, and Headers & Wires.

It should be noted that these categories are populated by parts we have mapped to our category structure based on their data. Not every part in our database has a designated category, however, when a part has new data added to it at any point that allows us to apply a category to it, it will automatically become associated with the proper category.

We went a level deeper and looked up which were the most viewed parts for each of these categories:

Ceramic Capacitors (Passives) Top Part - Kemet C0603C104K5RACTU

Chip SMD Resistors (Passives) Top Part - Panasonic ERA-3AEB104V

Circular Connectors (Connectors) Top Part - TE Connectivity 2213362-4

Connectors (Connectors) Top Part - TE Connectivity 2213254-1

Headers & Wire Housings (Connectors) Top Part - TE Connectivity 640456-5

For this question, we decided to stick to total views as a metric for popularity, but it’s not the only way we could slice the data. Here are some other ways to define a top category and the respective winners:

Which manufacturers saw the most growth last year?

Manufacturer with Biggest YoY Growth in Clicks - Samtec

Manufacturer with the Most Clicks - Texas Instruments

We wanted to look beyond part data and see which manufacturers saw the most growth on Octopart in terms of clicks. In this instance, a click is defined as a user clicking through to a distributor or manufacturer’s site through a link on Octopart or through the API.

In terms of manufacturer with the largest year over year increase in clicks, Samtec came out on top.

Meanwhile, the manufacturer with the biggest total click count was Texas Instruments.

Congrats to both Samtec and Texas Instruments for a great year on Octopart.

Which continent saw the largest growth in clicks?

Asking “where do people use Octopart?” isn’t as interesting a question as “where have people been using Octopart more in 2019 than the year before?” There are lots of ways to slice the results, so we chose to keep it broad and look at the continent that saw the most growth in clicks on Octopart year over year.

Turns out, Antarctica found Octopart to be really useful in 2019. Their click totals soared 525% year over year.

Africa (28%) and South America (17%) came in second and third with respective growth. But still. 525%!

Which new Octopart features were the most popular?

It can be difficult to compare the popularity of one feature to another. Each one may have unique criteria for what counts as engagement and those measures may not always make for apples to apples comparisons. For that reason, we decided to look at each feature’s announcement blog post and the number of views they received.

That revealed Up-to-the-Minute Pricing and Availability and Search by Specs as the two most popular new features from last year. Considering that close to real time pricing and availability was one of the most requested features of all time, it comes as no surprise that it generated the most interest when it launched.

Which was the most viewed blog post in 2019?

Easily our most popular blog post of 2019 (as well as one of the most viewed blog posts we’ve ever published) was an Industry Insider piece by Mark Harris: Making Big Brushed Motors Move.

Total views and time on page were the measures used to answer this question.

That wraps it up for our 2019 look back. Want to know more? You can reach out to us at contact@octopart.com with any questions, we love to hear from you.