Internet activity in the EU

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 GOOGLE 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

Technorati:

💬 Belgium 💬 internet