Visualizing the Most Used Languages on the Internet
Online content on the world wide web is consumed in thousands of different languages.
Some are more common than others, but it’s interesting to see that the online use of a language doesn’t always reflect how many people speak it. For example, Hindi is the third most spoken language worldwide, but it isn’t one of the top languages used on the internet.
English is by far the most commonly used language online, used by 60.4%, or about six million of the top 10 million websites. It’s also the most spoken language worldwide, with over 1.13 billion speakers.
By contrast, Chinese is spoken by 14.3% of the global population–more than 1.11 billion people—but it’s only used by 1.4% of the top 10 million websites.
Interestingly, Russian takes the second spot in the ranking in part due to the significant online presence of Runet, the internet’s Russian language community. Furthermore, it’s also the official language of multiple countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
The Future of Languages on the Web
Although it’s likely that English and Russian will continue to dominate the web, Asian languages have the highest potential for growth in internet usage. With an untapped audience of more than 1 billion people, the share of languages like Chinese and Arabic may grow alongside the region’s online population.