A little language-specific extension analysis...

[thefabfive]

I was searching through Google today when I decided to find out the relative strength of TLDs by language. I did a search for websites with a specific language and specified an extension. For example I looked for Japanese language sites under the .com extension. I did this for .com, .net, .tv, and the ccTLD for that particular language. What I found was interesting. Don't know if you'll find it interesting but here it is.


Google Results (in Millions) --------------------- Percentage of Total
Language --- .com --- .net --- .tv --- ccTLD ------ .com --- .net --- .tv --- ccTLD
Japanese ---- 94 ----- 16 ---- 1.9 --- 331 ------- 21.2% --- 3.6% --- 0.4% --- 74.7%
Korean ------ 18 ------ 7 -----1.4 ----28 ---------33.1%----12.9%----2.6%----51.5%
Arabic --------15------4.4-----0.2----20*--------37.9%-----11.1%----0.5%---50.5%
Hebrew-------3--------2-------0.04---19----------12.5%-----8.3%-----0.2%---79.0%
Russian------16------6.7-------0.7----65---------18.1%------7.6%-----0.8%----73.5%
Chinese(sim)-64-----11---------0.7----71---------43.6%------7.5%-----0.5%-----48.4%
German-------65------20------2.7----304--------16.6%------5.1%------0.7%-----77.6%
Greek---------3.6-------2------0.1-----21---------13.5%------7.5%-----0.4%-----78.7%
*estimated from .sa, .ir, .eg

A couple of things I get out of this:
1. .ru is not any stronger than .jp, .il, .de, or .gr.
2. Korean and the Arabic population are more embracing of .net.
3. The .tv TLD has made a big impact (bigger than others) on the Korean web.
4. .com is fairly strong in Korea, China (sim), and the Arabic world.

Not sure if that's anything new or groundbreaking, but interesting. Hopefully you can see the 'chart', if not I've attached a Word file.

[Edwin]

Very nice work!

One tiny caveat - you are seeing the number of PAGES on sites with those domain/language combinations, not the number of sites themselves. So a massive .com site with a million pages indexed (for example) would skew the numbers.

Still, it's a useful comparison for sure. Would be nice to extend it with e.g. .co.jp vs .jp (search for .co.jp and then for .jp and minus the .co.jp number and that should give you the .jp only number) and for other countries where there are multiple cctlds.

[rhys]

Thanks for this work! It is a good start and lots better than going on general supposition.

So what did you include in the ccTLDs? For Japan does that include all co.jp, .jp, or.jp, and ne.jp?

[thefabfive]

Thanks, guys.

For Japan I entered .jp which would include .co.jp, or.jp, and all other related extensions.

I'll see if I can get around to getting more details. It can get very complicated though when the language in question is not confined within a certain country. Also, English language sites located at .jp (for example) are not included and could skew the data even more.

[gammascalper]

Nice to see a few things we've postulated being blostered by numbers.

What query strings did you use when searching for the TLDs?

[thefabfive]

At google.com, on the right of the search box is 'Advanced Search'. I chose a language for the 'Language' field and an extension (like .jp or .com) for the 'Domain' field. That's pretty much it.

[kenne]

the distribution of page in japanese:
.com: .co.jp : .jp = 1:2:2

in simplified chinese:
.com: .com.cn : .cn = 5: 2: 3

[hanidn]

In Korea, top 25 ranked sites use their TLDs as ;

.com : .net : ccTLD = 18 : 3 : 4

.com is certainty dominated over here!

[touchring]

I was searching through Google today when I decided to find out the relative strength of TLDs by language. I did a search for websites with a specific language and specified an extension. For example I looked for Japanese language sites under the .com extension. I did this for .com, .net, .tv, and the ccTLD for that particular language. What I found was interesting. Don't know if you'll find it interesting but here it is.


Google Results (in Millions) --------------------- Percentage of Total
Language --- .com --- .net --- .tv --- ccTLD ------ .com --- .net --- .tv --- ccTLD
Japanese ---- 94 ----- 16 ---- 1.9 --- 331 ------- 21.2% --- 3.6% --- 0.4% --- 74.7%
Korean ------ 18 ------ 7 -----1.4 ----28 ---------33.1%----12.9%----2.6%----51.5%
Arabic --------15------4.4-----0.2----20*--------37.9%-----11.1%----0.5%---50.5%
Hebrew-------3--------2-------0.04---19----------12.5%-----8.3%-----0.2%---79.0%
Russian------16------6.7-------0.7----65---------18.1%------7.6%-----0.8%----73.5%
Chinese(sim)-64-----11---------0.7----71---------43.6%------7.5%-----0.5%-----48.4%
German-------65------20------2.7----304--------16.6%------5.1%------0.7%-----77.6%
Greek---------3.6-------2------0.1-----21---------13.5%------7.5%-----0.4%-----78.7%
*estimated from .sa, .ir, .eg

A couple of things I get out of this:
1. .ru is not any stronger than .jp, .il, .de, or .gr.
2. Korean and the Arabic population are more embracing of .net.
3. The .tv TLD has made a big impact (bigger than others) on the Korean web.
4. .com is fairly strong in Korea, China (sim), and the Arabic world.

Not sure if that's anything new or groundbreaking, but interesting. Hopefully you can see the 'chart', if not I've attached a Word file.

How do you search for specific language?

[kenne]

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=%22%E5%AD%90%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82%22+site:.jp&hl=en&hs=snz&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s

choose "japanese" for "return pages written in" row.

The numbers I got is different from fab5's. but the ratio is similar.

[touchring]

This bodes well for idn.com in Korean and Chinese. I've always said that .com and anything American is viewed as more prestigious by people in China, i'm surprised this is also the case for Korea.