Who in the world uses the internet?
Written on January 26, 2007
Taking a look at the statistics for one of my niche websites, I notice that I’ve been getting a fair amount of traffic lately from non-English countries, including Spain and Japan. Part of what I love about developing on the web is that your audience is the world. There are no physical limits to who can access your information.
Here are the latest Net Ratings from Nielsen, showing the countries with the most internet users. Guess who’s number one?
| Active Internet Users | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | November 2006 | December 2006 | Growth (%) | Diff. |
| Australia | 10,648,118 | 10,698,764 | 0.48 | 50,647 |
| Brazil | 14,448,077 | 14,419,335 | -0.20 | -28,741 |
| France | 20,876,899 | 21,183,022 | 1.47 | 306,123 |
| Germany | 33,282,100 | 33,396,576 | 0.34 | 114,476 |
| Italy | 17,242,991 | 17,560,383 | 1.84 | 317,392 |
| Japan | 43,879,983 | 44,627,021 | 1.70 | 747,038 |
| Switzerland | 3,796,392 | 3,753,112 | -1.14 | -43,281 |
| Spain | 13,227,952 | 13,625,800 | 3.01 | 397,848 |
| U.K. | 24,015,923 | 24,369,320 | 1.47 | 353,397 |
| U.S. | 150,190,256 | 150,419,613 | 0.15 | 229,358 |
| Total | 331,608,691 | 334,052,947 | 0.74 | 2,444,256 |
| Source: Nielsen NetRatings, 2007 |
||||
Spain saw the largest percentage of growth in December (3.01 percent), with 397,848 new users. In Japan, there were 747,038 new users, accounting for a 1.7 percent increase. This could explain why I have seen a jump in activity from these areas.
Also, a little interesting tidbit, Switzerland and Brazil both experienced a DROP in internet users. I wonder how that happened?
