As the number of Internet users has increased throughout the world, Americans now comprise a smaller percentage of them. That growth has led to a shift in the numbers of international versus domestic visitors to US sites.
That includes the top five destinations: Yahoo, Time Warner, Microsoft, Google, and eBay. “The fact that more than three-quarters of the traffic to Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft is now coming from outside of the U.S. is indicative of what a truly global medium the Internet has become,” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.
Ivins also noted that the US share of the world’s online population has fallen from 65 percent ten years ago to 25 percent now.
Even though a sizable number of international users have become the bulk of traffic to these sites, their engagement with online properties differs from US users. ComScore noted this by showing how the greater share of foreign visitors generally did not translate to a higher share of page views by them.
Google and Lycos proved to be exceptions to this. Google 79.8 percent of total traffic accounted for a higher share of page views, 89.1 percent. International users perform a higher number of searches, accounting for that figure.
Buyers of online advertising should consider whether they can serve an international market with their goods or services. If so, tweaking ad campaigns with the likes of Google or Yahoo to draw those visitors to one’s website, and ensuring those visitors can be served, could open up a greater world of profitability.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
