Despite
the Internet being a global network, the US has traditionally dominated.
This is in part due to the prevalence of American web surfers. However,
the US market has become saturated. Developing nations are spawning
the next generation of web surfers, where a combination of improved
urban economy and falling telecommunication costs has made internet
cafes on every corner and even connections at home possible. This
fundamental shift in demographics is dramatically altering the landscape
of the Internet.
The
internet is vast, and it is simply not possible to examine every
web site. However, the most popular web sites can be used to take
a pulse. Data was obtained from Alexa.com,
an excellent resource for web traffic data and analytics. Thanks
to Julie Henkens and Greg Orelind, I was able to investigate traffic
trends for the 500 most-visited web sites from July 2004 to January
2007.
Results
The
Internet is still dominated by the United States, followed by Asia
and Western Europe. However, their grip is beginning to loosen as
the rest of world gets connected at an unprecedented rate. Countries
that have never been able to place a website in the top 500 are
now pushing dozens of established websites out of this prestigious
list. This trend is both recent (within the last two years) and
accelerating. Interestingly, Asia is seeing its presence eroded
the fastest, especially China. Without Germany, Western Europe is
stagnant, and US domains appear to be on a gradual but constant
decline. The big winners are Eastern Europe (boasting a 500% increase
in the last year alone), South America and a eclectic assortment
of international domains.
It should
be noted that these trends are based on the rank of top the 500
most visited websites, which has some limitations. While providing
a good snapshot of web activity, the data does not necessarily scale
to the entire web. Also, only domains extensions (TLDs) are used
to identity national origin, which excludes many international .com,
.net, and .org websites from being categorized correctly. However,
it does provide a rough measure of how connected a country is. Generally,
the the most popular cross-section of websites (e.g. search engines,
news sources) have localized TLDs. Additionally, this analysis is
only looking at rank movement and not web traffic. This was purposeful.
Web dominance is an effect of top sites jostling - these are the
big players that can exert the most political and social influence.
The pure number of websites is less interesting, as it is more of
an effect of the economy (i.e. when money is flowing, people setup
websites for personal and small business use). Additionally, indications
are that traffic is growing across the board. Thus, the trends noted
here are most likely from new countries growing faster than old
players.
Number
of websites in the top 500 most visited websites
(July 2004 to January 2007)
|
July
2004 |
January
2007 |
%
Change |
US
Domains |
378 |
325 |
-14% |
Western
Europe |
21 |
26 |
+24% |
Asia |
81 |
46 |
-43% |
Eastern
Europe |
0 |
24 |
>1000% |
South
& Latin America |
5 |
11 |
120% |
|
Number
of websites in the top 500 most visited websites
(January 2006 - January 2007)
|
January
2006 |
January
2007 |
%
Change |
US
Domains |
358 |
325 |
-9% |
Western
Europe |
31 |
26 |
-16% |
Asia |
63 |
46 |
-27% |
Eastern
Europe |
4 |
24 |
500% |
South
& Latin America |
7 |
11 |
57% |
|
The 20 most visited top-level domains from July 2004 to January
2007 (decreasing order)
1
- com (Commercial, US)
2 - net (Network, US)
3 - jp (Japan)
4 - cn (China)
5 - org (Organization, US)
6 - hk (Hong Kong)
7 - de (Germany) |
8
- uk (United Kingdom)
9 - tw (Taiwan)
10 - br (Brazil)
11 - fr (France)
12 - il (Israel)
13 - it (Italy)
14 - kr (Korea) |
15
- se (Sweden)
16 - es (Spain)
17 - ca (Canada)
18 - au (Australia)
19 - ru (Russia)
20 - tr (Turkey) |
Big
Picture
Analysis
by Geographic Area
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|