694 Million People Used Internet Worldwide; India 10th Largest Online Nation

According to a latest study, there were 694 million people, age 15+, who used the Internet gobally in March 2006, which represented 14 percent of the world’s total population within this age group. The study was conducted by comScore Networks, which announced the launch of comScore World Metrix, which claimed to be the first “true” estimate of global online audience size and behavior. The study panel has active representation from countries that comprise 99 percent of the global Internet population.
It also included measurement of the major Asian countries, including China, Japan, India and Korea, which represented nearly 25 percent of the total worldwide online population (or 168.1 million users). The Asian aggregate was 11 percent larger than the U.S. (152 million users). India was the 10th largest online nation. India has contributed 16.7 million unique visitors in March.

Top Online Nations
comScore also released the top 15 countries ranked by average hours spent online per visitor for March 2006, as a measure of engagement. Israel led the list with 57.5 hours online, double of the US which did not rank in the top 15 countries. Rounding out the top 5 were Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands and Taiwan – all countries with high broadband penetration.

Top Portals
The top 15 media properties worldwide are MSN- Microsoft Sites topping the list with 538.6 million global users, followed by Google (495.8 million users), and Yahoo! (480.2 million users). Yahoo! Sites led all global properties in page views with 137.2 billion page views during March, followed by Google (108.7 billion page views), and MSN- Microsoft Sites (96.2 billion page views). comScore will officially begin releasing World Metrix statistics with the issuance of May data in June.

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