Comments for 3/4 of Traffic to Top Websites is International

3/4 of Traffic to Top Websites is International

2006-11-09T20:58:24Z

comScore has released some intriguing data about Web usage internationally. They say that 14 of the top 25 US Web properties now attract more visitors from outside the US than from within. That includes the top 5 US properties - Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network, Microsoft, Google Sites, and eBay.

This is significant because it's a continuation of a long-term trend for online population to be more distributed around the world - particularly in China and the rest of Asia. Indeed comScore says that the US share of global online population has fallen from 65% to less than 25% in 10 years. We've been tracking these trends on R/WW all this year - in September we noted that as a percentage of world Internet penetration, Asia increased from 35.6% to 36.5%. This incremental increase is happening month by month, whereas the US figure is staying static. As Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said:

"The fact that more than three-quarters of the traffic to Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft is now coming from outside of the U.S. is indicative of what a truly global medium the Internet has become."

Even at the Web 2.0 Summit this year, it's been noticeable that there is a larger international presence in the presenting companies. It's a great trend and really shows how mature the Web medium is getting. There are also big implications for marketers and advertisers, as more and more of the Internet's population becomes international.

Comment from Simon Moore on 2006-11-09

2006-11-10T01:07:36Z

Hi Richard,

Wow, that is interesting! Given the USA has a mixed PR worldwide from "I hate the evil USA" to "Thank God the USA is there" the info you quote suggests that start ups have a challenge - How can you be 'attractive' to both camps?

Or........... does it matter - Hey there are enough "lefthanders speaking mandarin who are male 18 to 25 yo" that that market is enough!

The exciting thing here in this research seems to be the opportunity for focus in a culture or geographic segment

Cheers Simon

Comment from lemon obrien on 2006-11-09

2006-11-10T02:30:36Z

international users also adopt the new websites/technologies faster than the American audience.

Comment from Evan Rudowski on 2006-11-10

2006-11-10T15:38:58Z

At Atlantic Leap we've worked with some well-known web brands to help them monetize their European traffic.

The main challenge is that many of these sites serve only American content and then want to sell advertising around this to non-U.S. visitors. But unless a site is willing to localize their content they will never achieve the big advertising deals -- only incremental sales on an opportunistic basis. Non-U.S. advertisers want to buy relevant, localized content -- it's a simple as that.

What's worse is that many U.S. sites knowingly serve U.S. ads to non-U.S. visitors so that they can more easily fulfil contractual delivery commitments. It's surprising more advertisers haven't caught on to the fact that a lot of their delivery is wasted on non-U.S. visitors who are not potential purchasers of their products.

Kind regards,
Evan Rudowski
www.atlanticleap.net

Comment from Tom O'Leary on 2006-11-10

2006-11-10T21:19:10Z

Hi Richard. I hope that you're on the way to recovery from back to back conferences. For some reason, my trackback to this piece didn't track.

While the figures don't surprise me (I check in with Internet World Statistics from time to time); it did put the figures into a practical perspective by citing specific examples of international traffic (i.e. wikipeida just under 80 percent non-US share!)

Question for US-based websites: Is your message internationalized?

All the best

Tom O'Leary

Comment from Otis Gospodnetic on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T06:27:17Z

That's right. That's why Simpy.com is getting localized left and right.

Comment from Juha on 2006-11-14

2006-11-14T19:52:08Z

This is very interesting, and I'd like to see surveys for other countries, including little ole New Zealand. I would guess that the deciding factor here is language - English-language sites will have mixed international audiences, something that would apply to Spanish-language ones too.

But yeah, the ads are a pain... US ads from retailers not willing to sell to overseas customers sucks.