Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

EUROPE - An overview by country

800 million live here. 110 million are online.

         

rencke

11:43 am on Oct 4, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member


Europe

Fact sheets
Population: 802,4 million incl. Asian parts of Russia and Turkey
Online population: 110,1 million (3Q 2000)
Online growth:75-100% per year
Native languages:40 different
Understanding of English: 28% or 225 million understand English
Hosts: 3 million (Jul 2000)
No of search general engines: 105 (Oct 2000)
No of national directories: 209 (Oct 2000)

Links to countries lead to the individual discussions here at WebmasterWorld, where facts on each searchengine can be found.Any comments or questions about this? Just hit the reply button below!

No of pages (mill) in: Search
Country Pop.
mill.
Online
pop.
Online
pop. %
Hosts Languages language domain engines &
directories
Albania 3,5 2.500 0,1% 119 Tosk, Greek n.a. n.a. n.a.
Andorra 0,1 5.000 7,5% 869 Catalan, French, Castilian n.a. n.a. n.a.
Austria 8,1 2.600.000 32,0% 349.625 German 9,9 2,3 11
Belgium 10,2 2.700.000 26,4% 361.026 Dutch, French, German n.a. 1,4 9
Belarus 10,4 10.000 0,1% 1.065 Byelorussian, Russian 0,01 0,2 6
Bosnia 3,8 3.500 0,1% 722 Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian n.a. 0,02 1
Bulgaria 7,8 200.000 2,6% 15.353 Bulgarian, Turkish 0,1 0,2 4
Croatia 4,3 100.000 2,1% 19.005 Croatian n.a. 0,3 2
Cyprus 0,8 80.000 10,6% 7.570 Greek, Turkish, English n.a. 0,02 4
Czech Rep 10,3 350.000 3,4% 138.060 Czech 1,9 2,2 4
Denmark 5,3 2.300.000 43,1% 369.684 Danish, Faroese, Greenlandic, German 1,4 2,5 9
Estonia 1,4 309.000 21,6% 35.773 Estonian, Russian, Ukrainian, English, Finnish 0,4 0,7 3
Faroe Islands 0,05 3.000 6,6% 1.321 Faroese, Danish n.a. n.a. n.a.
Finland 5,2 2.270.000 43,9% 703.958 Finnish 94%, Swedish 6% 1,8 3,2 5
France 59,3 9.000.000 15,3% 983.450 French 6,9 2,9 16
Germany SE Dir 82,8 18.000.000 21,7% 1.916.512 German 9,9 9,6 28
Greece 10,6 1.330.000 12,4% 105.997 Greek, English, French 0,3 0,7 22
Hungary 10,1 650.000 6,4% 129.587 Hungarian 0,7 1,0 7
Iceland 0,28 144.000 52,1% 37.974 Icelandic 0,2 0,3 3
Ireland 3,8 941.000 21,6% 86.288 English, Irish (Gaelic) n.a. n.a. n.a.
Italy 57,6 11.600.000 20,1% 1.574.380 Italian, German, French, Slovene 3,8 4,6 20
Latvia 2,4 234.000 9,7% 15.773 Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian 0,2 0,1 5
Lithuania 3,6 225.000 6,2% 14.295 Lithuanian, Polish, Russian 0,1 0,2 2
Luxemburg 0,4 86.000 19,7% 11.724 Luxembourgian, German, French, English n.a. 0,2 3
Macedonia 2,0 30.000 1,5% 2.341 Macedonian (70%), Albanian (21%) other n.a. n.a.
Malta 0,4 40.000 10,2% 1.330 Maltese, English n.a. 0,04 3
Moldova 4,4 15.000 0,3% 1.713 Moldovan, Russian, Gagauz n.a. n.a. n.a.
Monaco 0,03 n.a. n.a 297 French, English, Italian, Monegasque n.a. n.a. n.a.
Netherlands 15,9 6.800.000 42,8% 1.082.089 Dutch 1,2 1,3 17
Norway 4,5 2.338.000 55,7% 503.605 Norwegian 2,5 3,2 9
Poland 38,6 2.800.000 7,3% 259.511 Polish 1,5 2,3 7
Portugal 10,0 700.000 7,0% 117.370 Portuguese 1,8 0,7 8
Romania 22,4 600.000 2,7% 29.662 Romainan, Hungarian, German 0,1 0,2 5
Russia 146,0 9.200.000 6,3% 260.373 Russian 3,1 4,1 24
Slovakia 5,4 700.000 12,9% 31.753 Slovak, Hungarian n.a. 0,7 6
Slovenia 1,9 460.000 23,0% 23.333 Slovenian (91%), Serbo-Croatian n.a. 0,4 3
Spain 40,0 4.600.000 11,5% 538.540 Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque 6,3 3,7 28
Sweden 8,9 4500.000 50,7% 624.302 Swedish 1,5 2,0 11
Switzerland 7,3 2,400.000 33,1% 418.044 German (64%), French, Italian, Romansch, other n.a. 2,4 8
Turkey 65,7 2 000.000 3,1% 108.410 Turkish, Kurdish, Araic, Armenian, Greek 0,8 0,5 9
Ukraine 49,1 200.000 0,4% 32.600 Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian n.a. 0,3 9
United Kingdom 57,2 19.470.000 32,7% 2.080.906 English, Welsh, Gaelic n.a. n.a. n.a.
Yugoslavia 20,6 80.000 0,0% 14.199 Serbo-Croatian, Albanian n.a. 0,1 4

Ted

2:18 pm on Oct 4, 2000 (gmt 0)



Pretty impressive work their Rencke, and thanks for the warm welcome :).

pete

12:09 pm on Oct 6, 2000 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for the hard work Jan. I look forward to learning a lot

georged

3:04 pm on Oct 6, 2000 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Rencke, that's v. good info!
Do you know why such a large percentage of the Scandinavian populations are online?
My guesses are that it might be something to do with remote areas, long nights? Or is it that you guys (sorry to lump you all together) are web-savvy funky business paperless office types? Or is it Government initiatives?
I am genuinely astounded! Over half the population of Iceland are online? What's the answer?

rencke

3:29 pm on Oct 6, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Web usage reached an all time high in August, (53% of all Swedes - Nielsen Netratings) when most of Scandinavia has 18 hours of daylight and Iceland has midnight sun, so it isn't the long nights. Denmark is densely populated, so it can't be distance. The reasons are as follows:

1. Rich countries, just a notch below USA
2. High level of education, 12 years minimum for great majority.
3. 3 foreign languages taught in school, English for a minimum of 6 years, 9 for most.
4. Very high frequency of PC:s at home
5. Early adopters of new tech for 110 years. (Stockholm had more phones than NYC in 1893.)
6. In Sweden employers have been given a tax incentive to give employees a PC for home use as a fringe benefit. Hugely popular!

That should be about it.

Sorry about the columns not beeing aligned. Brett has been working for 36 hours to re-program the submit feature to allow for extra spaces to align columns. He now thinks it might be a browser problem. Hopefully, there will be fix during the weekend.

rcjordan

5:28 pm on Oct 6, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Jan,

Absolutely a jaw-dropper, a true wake-up call. A quick glimpse confirms my comments made to you outside these forums, which I'll drop here with some minor tweaks to put them in context:

A strictly personal observation:
American publishers are -or should be- very concerned about our language illiteracy. It is going to hurt us severely in some web markets. I think that anyone addressing this issue now will be seen as 'cutting edge' in the publishing/SEO business. I am jealous of multi-language cultures, I'm playing 'catch-up ball' here and I know it. If we Americans expect to hold web-business to an English 'standard,' we're crazy.

rencke

4:37 pm on Oct 7, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I agree. I almost choked on my morning coffee, when I came across the information [ceveil.qc.ca] about only 28% of all Europeans understanding English and only 32% surfing in English. I have lived in and travelled throughout Europe for half a century and had absolutely no idea. I thought it would be around 50% at least.

I will now have to go back to my clients and tell them that they have to re-think a big part of their Internet strategies. Hopefully, we will get a good fix on this on a per country basis through the project that I will start here in mid-October.

gregor samsa

4:51 pm on Oct 17, 2000 (gmt 0)



Small addendum to your list, rencke:

Hungary has a small number of native German speakers.

In Germany there are still several hundred people somewhere around Hesse/Thuringia that speak Sorbic, a slavic language. Once it was their mother tongue, but today it's almost dying.

rencke

5:49 pm on Oct 17, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Thank you Gregor and Welcome to WebmasterWorld and its European Forum. I hope you will like it here.

I have updated the info on Hungary as you can see. When it comes to Germany, there is such a large number of minority languages there, that I decided to leave them out. I read a newspaper article about the Sorbs in a Swedish newspaper some years ago. I cannot remember the details, just that the story of this unknown people was very interesting.

You wouldn't happen to understand Hungarian by any chance? We need someone with that knowledge to help out with the information on Hungarian search engines, which I am planning to publish in this forum on Sunday the 22nd of October, along with 30 other European countries. Keep your eyes open.

rencke

3:03 pm on Oct 25, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The overview has been updated today with links from the country names to the respective discussions for each country, where info on their search engines and directories can be found.

Information on the number of pages in each official langauge has been added, as well as the total number of pages in each domain (irrespective of language). The number of searchengines and directories in each country is now shown here.

rencke

5:57 pm on Nov 9, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The overview of Europe has now been updated with online population statistics for the 3rd quarter of 2000. Rapid growth has taken place a.o. in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, the Baltic countries, Ireland and Spain.

Rumbas

11:49 am on Nov 10, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



rencke - it is awesome!!!

I think the points you give out concerning the large online population in Scandinavia is head on the nail!
Scandinavians earn good salaries, there's a lot of tech freaks, and finnally in Denmark we have the same opportunities to buy pc's with a tax benefit.

rencke

2:51 pm on Nov 10, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Not bad for 4 small countries, eh? 11,5 million of us online. Wonder where it will stop. 15 mill?

NFFC

3:43 pm on Nov 14, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hope this is not too OT but there is an excellent database of letters, character sets etc for many languages at the Institute of the Estonian Language [eki.ee]

rencke

10:04 pm on Nov 15, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That's a very nice resource you posted here NFFC. Thanks - and it was not off-topic at all. The extent of your surfing habits is a constant source of amazement to me. How on earth did you stumble upon this?

NFFC

10:17 am on Nov 18, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>surfing habits is a constant source of amazement to me

hehe, can I take that as a compliment? Here's something else, again not sure if this is the right thread.

German watchdog orders unmetered access

"Germany's telecoms watchdog has given Deutsche Telecom less than three months to offer ISPs a flat-rate charge for network access."

The Register [theregister.co.uk]

rencke

10:49 am on Nov 18, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Interesting. We've been on flat rate for years here, except that the local phone call to the ISP modem bank is charged like any other local call, i.e. at 0.20/0.12 sek per minute, equal to $1.20/$0.60 per hour depending on the time of the day and the day of the week. Wonder what the situation is elsewhere?

As to the right thread for this, I guess that this one:
[webmasterworld.com...]
would have been right. But I suppose your nerves failed you in the last minute.

NFFC

5:39 pm on Nov 27, 2000 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



More usage figures for European Directories:

"AllEurope serves totally more than 115 million web pages every month"

The breakdown of the AllEurope audience is shown here [alleurope.com].

[added]Oops date: June 1999