Internet activity in the EU
16 Jun 2005
The sport of data consolidation: I got my hands on the number of domainnames for all EU countries (June 2005) and combined those with the # pages in Google for each TLD (Top Level Domain, like .be or .fr) and the population statistics for the EU countries. Some Excel activity later, this is what I got:
Registration activity
This is the number of registered domains per 1000 inhabitants. It might give an indication of how ‘normal’ it is to have your own website.
This is the Top 5:
| ext | country | domains | persons | dom/1000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .dk | Denmark | 166.414 | 5.410.000 | 30,76 |
| .nl | Netherlands | 405.721 | 16.300.000 | 24,89 |
| .de | Germany | 1.194.366 | 82.720.000 | 14,44 |
| .ee | Estonia | 18.088 | 1.340.000 | 13,50 |
| .at | Austria | 93.689 | 8.160.000 | 11,48 |
Remarks: Estonia seems a surprising entry here, but actually Poland and the Czech Republic aren’t doing that bad either. Better than Belgium, actually.
Authoring activity
This is the average # web pages per person for each country. I estimated the #pages per TLD as a Google query on “xx site:.xx”. (so for belgium, a search on “be site:.be”). If the number of pages is a rough estimator of how much information is available, then this is an indicator of how productive the information producers of the country are.
This is the Top 5:
| ext | country | Google pages | persons | pages/pers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .lu | Luxembourg | 1.670.000 | 455.000 | 3,67 |
| .uk | United Kingdom | 174.000.000 | 59.900.000 | 2,90 |
| .fi | Finland | 14.400.000 | 5.250.000 | 2,74 |
| .se | Sweden | 17.800.000 | 9.040.000 | 1,97 |
| .ee | Estonia | 2.280.000 | 1.340.000 | 1,70 |
Remarks: Luxembourg, the country where everyone wants to work and pay taxes but no one wants to live. And again Estonia, up there with the Scandinavian connection and the English!
Site size
This is the average # web pages per domain for each country. This might be an indicator of web site size – the work a webmaster puts in his creation – or just verbosity (hey, the French are first, and then the Spanish, and they DO talk a lot).
This is the Top 5:
| ext | country | Google pages | domains | pages/dom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .fr | France | 43.900.000 | 72.338 | 607 |
| .es | Spain | 12.400.000 | 25.988 | 477 |
| .fi | Finland | 14.400.000 | 30.182 | 477 |
| .lu | Luxembourg | 1.670.000 | 4.458 | 375 |
| .uk | United Kingdom | 174.000.000 | 495.041 | 351 |
Remarks: the best place to be a webmaster is France. The web sites are large, you have no competition from the US or South-America (no one speaks English or Spanish) and there’s lots of domain names still available.
All data:
| TLD | Description | DOMAINS | SHARE | POPULATION |
PAGE/ PERSON |
DOM/ 1000 |
PAG/ DOM |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| at | Austria� | 93.689 | 2,8% | 10.300.000 | 8.160.000 | 1,26 | 11,48 | 110 |
| be | Belgium� | 72.949 | 2,1% | 10.600.000 | 10.440.000 | 1,02 | 6,99 | 145 |
| cz | Czech Republic� | 79.612 | 2,3% | 8.350.000 | 10.230.000 | 0,82 | 7,78 | 105 |
| dk | Denmark� | 166.414 | 4,9% | 8.250.000 | 5.410.000 | 1,52 | 30,76 | 50 |
| ee | Estonia� | 18.088 | 0,5% | 2.280.000 | 1.340.000 | 1,70 | 13,50 | 126 |
| fi | Finland� | 30.182 | 0,9% | 14.400.000 | 5.250.000 | 2,74 | 5,75 | 477 |
| fr | France� | 72.338 | 2,1% | 43.900.000 | 60.290.000 | 0,73 | 1,20 | 607 |
| de | Germany� | 1.194.366 | 35,2% | 62.800.000 | 82.720.000 | 0,76 | 14,44 | 53 |
| gr | Greece� | 21.851 | 0,6% | 5.040.000 | 11.210.000 | 0,45 | 1,95 | 231 |
| hu | Hungary� | 63.846 | 1,9% | 5.600.000 | 10.080.000 | 0,56 | 6,33 | 88 |
| ie | Ireland� | 13.441 | 0,4% | 640.000 | 4.030.000 | 0,16 | 3,34 | 48 |
| it | Italy� | 211.700 | 6,2% | 25.500.000 | 58.600.000 | 0,44 | 3,61 | 120 |
| lv | Latvia� | 8.061 | 0,2% | 2.020.000 | 2.300.000 | 0,88 | 3,50 | 251 |
| lt | Lithuania� | 8.924 | 0,3% | 1.890.000 | 3.430.000 | 0,55 | 2,60 | 212 |
| lu | Luxembourg� | 4.458 | 0,1% | 1.670.000 | 455.000 | 3,67 | 9,80 | 375 |
| nl | Netherlands� | 405.721 | 12,0% | 20.700.000 | 16.300.000 | 1,27 | 24,89 | 51 |
| pl | Poland� | 294.651 | 8,7% | 7.780.000 | 36.130.000 | 0,22 | 8,16 | 26 |
| pt | Portugal� | 16.056 | 0,5% | 3.690.000 | 10.460.000 | 0,35 | 1,53 | 230 |
| sk | Slovak Republic� | 23.719 | 0,7% | 2.600.000 | 5.380.000 | 0,48 | 4,41 | 110 |
| si | Slovenia� | 11.021 | 0,3% | 2.060.000 | 1.960.000 | 1,05 | 5,62 | 187 |
| es | Spain� | 25.988 | 0,8% | 12.400.000 | 43.430.000 | 0,29 | 0,60 | 477 |
| se | Sweden� | 61.499 | 1,8% | 17.800.000 | 9.040.000 | 1,97 | 6,80 | 289 |
| uk | United Kingdom� | 495.041 | 14,6% | 174.000.000 | 59.900.000 | 2,90 | 8,26 | 351 |
