Myths about Maori being music lovers and players of games are being bolstered by research showing many visit entertainment-based websites.

Sites offering rock music, youth information and game downloads were top of the net hit parade for Maori, according to research measured by Nielsen/NetRatings in October.

While race, gender and physical appearance are meant to vanish in the web's democracy, it seems that ethnic stereotyping may be supported by these figures.

Other figures issued by Nielsen/NetRatings indicate that men tend to look at car, sport and technology sites while women visit pages dealing with the arts, gardening and fashion.

Mark Ottaway, Nielsen/NetRatings New Zealand managing director, said 6.24 per cent of October's New Zealand internet users were Maori, or identified as such when measured by his company's market intelligence survey.

The survey sampled 270,000 people visiting about 200 sites.

Music information site NoiZyland's proportion of Maori visitors was 18.3 per cent, almost three times the average for that month of other groups, he said.

Nielsen surveys about 200 major sites in New Zealand and the figures for this survey were generated by random pop-up question boxes.

Ottaway said that by placing a cookie on the browser of the visitor's personal computer, visits to other sites could also be tracked.

He said the figures released applied only to October, they were pretty accurate as the survey has been running for almost 18 months.

The results were anonymous, he said.

Work was being done to hone the survey so that geographic access and other information such as income and age, were being researched.

Alan Te Moranga Litchfield, lecturer in information systems at Auckland University of Technology and a member of Ngati Whatua, said the figures posed more questions than answers.

He has been developing computer-based modelling systems for tribal genealogy in IT systems.

Litchfield said he could not dispute the figures but the accuracy of the view they presented of Maori internet use was likely to be flawed because the service did not track sites that were outside the mainstream.

There were obviously other sites Maori were going to, and the system did not say how many people opted out of the pop-up questions.

There was also no information about age, he said, and if the survey was capturing young people it might be that they were looking at youth-oriented activities.