UK Has Most Active Online Population In Europe

The UK has the most active online population in Europe, with the highest average number of daily visitors (21.8 million), according to new research from comScore.

comScore adds that the UK has the highest usage days per month (21 per user), and the highest average time spent per month per user (34.4 hours) in Europe.

The comScore World Metrix study also reveals that on an average day in April 2007, there were 122 million Europeans age 15 or older online, versus 114 million in the US.

The average European accessed the internet from either a home or a work computer an average of 16.5 days in the month and spent a total of 24 hours viewing 2,662 web pages.

The comScore study compares activity across the 16 countries where comScore tracks Internet usage with panel-based measurement and highlights the differences in Internet development by country.

European users average 16.5 usage days per month according to comScore. Countries that have usage days below the European average are Russia (11.4 average usage days), Austria (12.0), Italy (12.9), Ireland (13.0), Portugal (13.4), Norway (14.7), Denmark (14.7), Switzerland (15.1), Belgium (15.5) and Finland (16.4).

Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said: “This marks the first time we have released this detailed of a portrait of Internet usage across the 16 countries, making these comparisons truly revealing.

“Such comparisons are only possible due to the consistency of our panel-based methodology country-to-country.”

The study also revealed that Google is the most popular property in 13 of the 16 countries, followed by Microsoft in most countries. Yahoo! remains the 3rd most popular property across Europe, despite making the top 3 list in only three countries – Ireland, Italy and Spain.

A recent report from In-Stat forecast that by 2011, total worldwide broadband subscribers will number 567 million, almost double the current 285 million subscriber base.

Meanwhile, a report from Media-Screen said that US broadband users are spending 48% (approximately one hour and 40 minutes) of their spare time online in a typical weekday.

comScore: www.comscore.com