net stats

This page draws together some key figures about the online population and the web, drawn from the Metrics & Statistics guide.

It covers -

• online activity
• online population
• domains
• email
• offline
• infrastructure

     online activity

Figures for online activity are contentious. The October 2000 Falling Through The Net: Towards Digital Inclusion report (PDF) from the US Department of Commerce - consistent with independent commercial and academic studies - suggests that the most popular online activities in advanced economies are -

• email (79.9%)
• searching for information (58.8%)
• checking news (43.2%)
• education (35.4%)
• doing "job-related tasks" (35.3%)
• paying bills and shopping (30%)

76% of US internet users are believed to check their email at least once per day. Half of all online shopping is conducted in the workplace.

Australia's National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) claimed in 2003 that the top categories for Australian broadband users in 2002 were -

• Multi category computers and consumer electronics (33%)
• Special interest news (29%)
• Music (29%)
• Classified/auctions (28%)
• Videos/movies (25%)
• Shopping directories and guides (17%)
• Online gaming (15%)
• Arts/graphics (14%)

     online population

The NUA estimates of the size of the global online population were -

As noted earlier in this guide, NUA competitor CIA claimed that the size of the US online population in 1999 was 110 million users, with the global population reaching 945 million in early 2004 (more than double the estimate from Nielsen-NetRatings).

The 2001 ABA Australian Families & Internet Use report suggested that 61% of adults are online and 30% of all Australians are "online at home". In August 2003 NOIE claimed that 54% of Australian households had "access to the Internet". That compared with -

63% Sweden
63% the US
59% Hong Kong
59% the Netherlands
52% the UK
46% Italy
44% Germany
38% Japan
34% Spain
29% France
28% Brazil

The figure did not identify the number of sessions online or the duration of sessions online (ie a single annual session of 5 minutes online has the same value as a daily three hour session).

The same NOIE document suggested that 75% of adult (16 years and over) persons in Australia had "access to the Internet in the 1st Quarter 2003", compared to -

90% in Sweden
86% in the US
74% in the Netherlands
69% in Hong Kong
69% in the UK
61% in Germany
59% in Italy
55% in France
49% in Spain
42% in Brazil
31% in Japan.

     domains

As of 2000 estimates of the global number of registered domains range from 15 million to 17.75 million, including 9.5 million dot com domains.

As noted earlier in this guide, the OCLC estimates that there were 7.12 million unique sites as of June 2000.

As of December 2002 the number of registrations for the dot-au space (regulated by auDA) was 310,733. That had increased to over 347,000 by July 2003, over 440,000 by July 2004 and over 500,000 by early 2005.

As of mid-2002 there were an estimated aggregate 101,076 live domains in the dot-nz space -

.co.nz 92,000
.org.nz 5,700
.net.nz 5,327
.school.nz 1,600
.gen.nz 840
.govt.nz 562
.ac.nz 534
.cr.nz 28
.iwi.nz 26
.mil.nz 17

Graphs for dot-au and dot-nz registrations are here and here (PDF).

In the UK some numbers as at June 2002 were -

.co.uk 3,278,633
.me.uk 9,720
.org.uk 236,808
.ltd.uk 13,419
.plc.uk 1,583
.net.uk 540
.sch.uk 31,910

     Email traffic

The Year-End 2000 Mailbox Report from Messaging Online suggests that globally there are around 891 million email addresses, equivalent to one address for every thirteen people on the planet. Consumers comprise 60% of email accounts; most people have multiple addresses. More detailed figures are here.

As of August 2001 around 150 million SMS messages were sent on Australian phone networks, with global traffic for the year estimated at 200 billion messages.

Marketers suggest that 2.8 billion direct marketing email messages were sent in 1998, forecast to increase to 236 billion in 2005. Other sources estimate that spam accounts for 30% of email.

     offline

Figures for national and international snailmail traffic, as a frame of reference, are highlighted here. For global estimates of non-internet content production and storage (eg of 22 643 newspaper titles, 40 000 scholarly journals, 80 000 mass-market periodicals and 40 000 newsletters in 1999) see the How Much Information report by Hal Varian & Peter Lyman and UNESCO studies discussed elsewhere on this site.

     infrastructure

The August 2003 NOIE report suggested that -

• 84% of all Australian businesses used PCs
• 72% of all businesses had internet access (99% of major enterprises, 93% of medium size businesses, 65% of micro businesses)
• 94% of online businesses used electronic mail
• 24% of all businesses had a website
• 81% of major businesses had a site, 55% of Medium businesses (down from 56% in the preceding year), 34% of Small businesses and 15% of micro businesses
• 35% of online businesses ordered online (up from 29% in the preceding year) but 9% of online businesses (down from 13% in the preceding year) received online orders

 

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