Rest Of The World 55 United States 45

A recent Internet traffic report from self-labelled leading provider of e-business intelligence company WebSideStory, Inc. could be the first to show that traffic from non-US countries now outnumbers US traffic. And it would take a stupid or naïve person to suggest that these numbers will not swing further into the favour of the rest of the planet, especially as massively populated countries such as China and India bring their people online.

It should be noted that WebSideStory base their statistics only on sites using their HitBox Enterprise software and other HitBox Web traffic analysing tools, and while that is an apparently significant figure ("more than 50 million Internet surfers a day ... more than 150,000 sites worldwide") it's nothing final. 99% of statistics are inaccurate, right? ;) However, regardless of actual statistics, it is undeniable that Internet traffic from outside the United States will continue to grow.

The WebSideStory press release gives the percent of traffic from non-US countries as 55 percent, with Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Japan the most net-friendly. The United States is responsible for 45 percent.

1. United States (45.02%)
2. Germany (5.56%)
3. South Korea (4.57%)
4. Japan (4.35%)
5. Britain
6. China
7. Spain
8. Italy
9. France

Even without statistics, the trend for sites seeking a global audience is catering, more than ever, to non-US users and non-English speakers.

I encourage anyone with questions or information relevant to this article to comment below. Do you have alternative stats? What are you or your clients doing to make your site useful for people speaking a different language, or coming from a different culture? Do you think more sites are now focusing on a specific, local audience instead of continuing with often ineffective attempts to push localised-content on a wider audience?

isaac