There are now more than 220 million Chinese internet users (17 percent of the population), with the US trailing slightly behind at 216 million (71 percent).

The numbers were reported by Beijing-based research group BDA China.

Since the internet’s penetration in China is still relatively low, huge growth is expected.

In the Q1 earnings release, Google said, “Revenues from outside of the United States totalled $2.65 billion, representing over half of total revenues in the first quarter of 2008.

With signs of saturation in the US paid search market, international growth is critical to both Google and its search competitors.

Baidu is China’s most popular search engine by far, with Google only accounting for 15 percent of internet searches. Nonetheless, Google has said it wants to be the search leader in China in five years’ time.

China’s internet consumption hit nearly £30 billion in 2007. This number is predicted to rise by nearly 50 percent this year, according to a survey conducted in Netguide 2008. For this reason, China is a crucial market for US search companies.

Search terms vary by country.

Where Brits are likely to type the word “holiday” when searching for their next travel destination, Americans and Canadians are more likely to use the word “vacation”. The French, on the other hand, often misspell the term, typing “holliday”.

Really, really interesting facts about international online behaviour

1. The majority of travellers visit between two and five websites when shopping for travel online, usually to compare prices (The PhoCusWright Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey)

2. Finns spent £41.2 million online on clothing and footwear in 2007 (Euromonitor International Estimates)

3. South Korea was number one in terms of countries online purchases of clothing, accessories or shoes in the last quarter of 2007. (The Neilson Company)

4. The European online travel market (including the 12 newest EU member countries) may reach £54 billion by 2009, which is about a quarter of the total market for selected travel and tourism services (Centre for Regional and Tourism Research, Denmark)

5. In 2007, over half the Swedish population made online purchases

Research from Journal du net 2007 shows that 85 percent of French internet users consult blogs, forums, and customer reviews before buying a holiday online.

For two-thirds of these users, the first motivation is to read information about their travel destination. About 30 percent consult such sites to get new holiday ideas and tips.

The e-travellers are therefore becoming major actors in the growth of e-tourism. Over half of the participants admitted they would be likely to consult website offers which also provided consumer reviews.

A smaller portion (nine percent) admitted the customer reviews incited them to purchase holidays directly from the hosting website.

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One of Poland’s most popular web portals, Onet, has just had a makeover. Their beta version of the new design can now be visited at http://beta.onet.pl/ .

However, the introduced changes are more than just cosmetic. Apart from new looks and improved code, Onet has given up on using its own search engine, Morfeo, in favour of Google.

This move will give Google an additional few percent of the Polish market share.

In January 2008, Onet celebrated a record four billion monthly impressions. It remains the most popular Polish portal on the web, visited by nearly 10 million users every month.

Research shows that Czech people book their holidays between 1 and 3pm. This is the time when many people are at work. According to research from the Association of Czech Travel Agencies, holidays booked during this time account for 16 percent of the total bought holidays in the Czech Republic.

Many Czechs buy holidays over the internet in the first half of the week. On the contrary, the weekend sees the lowest number of online holiday bookings.

Last year, Czechs bought 400,000 holidays on the internet. Eighty percent of these purchases were last minute holidays.

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The hunt for the face of global search is on. Oban Multilingual has teamed up with their EyeforTravel partners to hold a competition to find the most unique and creative ways people search online for holidays.

Top prize will be a travel voucher worth £250.

Entry to the competition, which kicks off May 21st, will be available through faceofglobalsearch.com. Entrants will be asked to input their answers to a few questions about how their online search and travel behaviour.

The goal is to find global travel searches that involve more than typing a word into the Google search bar.

For example, a French person might find inspiration from travel guide site top-depart.com, and then head to Alibabuy.com to compare plane ticket prices, finally finding their discount accommodation on hostelworld.com.

Search marketing needs to be both global and local.

If this confuses you, you may want to tune into podcasts recently released by the Regional Language Network. They cover the hot topic of international marketing and feature the BBC’s Helen Finch.
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Safer Internet day is February 12th. Few people know the internet better than Greig Holbrook.

Greig is founder of OBAN Multilingual, a company which studies the internet habits of people worldwide. And with two young girls of his own, he understands the perils of internet safety. (more…)

The “.es” domain name authority has begun to admit Spanish/Castilian characters, such as “ñ”, “Ç”, and “ü”, as well as the accent ( ´ ).
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Did you know?

Schnitzelmitkartoffelsalat

Schnitzelmitkartoffelsalat is a German concatenation which means escalope with potato salad. This term has proved quite useful in the world of search engine optimisation. (more…)