Global Internet usage

Graph of Internet users per 100 inhabitants between 1997 and 2007 by International Telecommunication Union

Country population penetration of Internet use in 2009

2007 distribution of Internet users by country (CIA)

Global Internet usage provides information on the number of people who use the Internet by language, nationality, geography, etc.

Languages used on the Internet

Most web pages on the Internet are in English. A study made by W3Techs shows that as of December 2011 more than 56% of all websites use English as their content language. Other top languages which are used at least in 2% of websites are German, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian and Portuguese.

The use of English online has increased by around 281% over the past ten years, however this is far less than Spanish (743%), Chinese (1,277%), Russian (1,826%) or Arabic (showing a growth of 2,501% over the same period). The foreign language internet is rapidly expanding, with English being used by only 27% of users worldwide.

A study on the presence of Romance languages on the Internet, published by the Latin Union in collaboration with FUNREDES, showed that as of November 2007, 45% of the webpages were written in English, 7.8% in Spanish, 4.41% in French, 2.66% in Italian, 1.39% in Portuguese, 0.28% in Romanian and 5.9% in German.

Internet users by language

The source of the figures in the table below is Internet World Stats. These are estimates of the world online population by language for May 31, 2011.

Position	Language	Internet users	% of all
1	English	565,004,126	26.8
2	Chinese	509,965,013	24.2
3	Spanish	164,968,742	7.8
4	Japanese	99,182,000	4.7
5	Portuguese	82,586,600	3.9
6	German	75,422,674	3.6
7	Arabic	65,365,400	3.3
8	French	59,779,525	3.0
9	Russian	59,700,000	3.0
10	Korean	39,440,000	2.0

Content languages for websites

The percentages of websites using various content languages as of the 30 December 2011.

Language	Percentage
English	56.6%
German	6.5%
Russian	4.8%
Japanese	4.7%
Spanish	4.6%
Chinese	4.5%
French	3.9%
Italian	2.1%
Portuguese	2.0%
Polish	1.4%
Arabic	1.3%
Dutch	1.1%
Turkish	1.1%
Swedish	0.7%
Persian	0.7%
Czech	0.5%
Romanian	0.4%
Korean	0.3%
Greek	0.3%
Hungarian	0.3%
Thai	0.3%
Vietnamese	0.3%
Danish	0.3%
Indonesian	0.3%
Finnish	0.2%
Norwegian	0.2%
Bulgarian	0.2%
Slovak	0.2%
Hebrew	0.1%
Croatian	0.1%
Lithuanian	0.1%
Serbian	0.1%
Catalan	0.1%
Slovenian	0.1%
Ukrainian	0.1%
Norwegian Bokmål	0.1%

All other languages are used in less than 0.1% of websites.

See also

• List of countries by number of Internet users
• List of countries by number of broadband Internet users
• List of countries by number of Internet hosts
• English in computer science
• Global digital divide
• Rural Internet
• Computer recycling
• Computer technology for developing areas

External links

• Internet World Stats
  • Internet World Stats — Global Internet usage by language Latest stats
  • Internet World Stats — Internet users in the world by years
• European Travel Commission New Media Trend Watch
• Estimation of English and non-English Language Use on the WWW, 2000, web pages, 32 Latin character languages
• World GDP by Language
• Internet Users Map 2005
• CIA - The World Factbook
• Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages - NYTimes.com
• English translation of the 23rd CNNIC Statistical Survey Report on Internet Usage in China
• List of CNNIC statistical reports
• Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the Internet, UNESCO (2006)
• Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet, UNESCO (2009)
• Language Observatory, Japan Science and Technology Agency
• FUNREDES Observatory of linguistic and cultural diversity on the Internet