Annual Benchmarks for the Top 100 Online Languages
25 Mar 2019
by
Dr. Arle Lommel
Rising internet penetration rates and gross domestic product (GDP) enable ever greater amounts of online-accessible economic activity: In 2019, 4.03 billion people will contribute their page views, clicks, transactions, and opinions to the digital economy. This report provides top-line figures for the global value of the top 100 online languages, shows how they have changed over time, and provides insight on how organizations operating internationally can use that data to drive more intelligent international investment. The results help guide global businesses to select locales with the greatest possible return on investment and understand how their choices affect their competitiveness. This report combines data from multiple sources, including: United Nations population figures, internet penetration rates from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), country-level GDP figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), online language demand data from Wikipedia, and historical data from the CSA Research longitudinal study of the “Global Website Assessment Index.”
The first task of any visitor on a global website is to find content in a language he or she can read. Even those with high proficiency in English as a second language strongly prefer content in their mother tongue (see “ Can’t Read, Won’t Buy,” Feb1…
