In our 2013 study of 2,787 websites, we found 290 different languages supported, 59 of which appeared 10 times or more; 140 appeared at least twice; 150 appeared just once, mostly of these on Wikipedia, which has become the seed bed for emerging online languages. English appeared on 2,480 of them, or 89%. This data is published in “Assessing the World’s Most Prominent Websites” (Dec13).

These websites aren’t just a random collection. They are the world’s most prominent – a list comprised of the Alexa Top Sites, The Interbrand Best Global Brands, The Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500. Forty percent of these important sites are still monolingual. Eleven percent did not include English as a language, compared to only eight percent last year. Universally, English gets added as the second language (if not the first), with very few exceptions.

The rise in non-English sites is due to the increasing number of monolingual sites in non-English speaking regions, propelled onto the lists – particularly Alexa – by the surge of online populations in Asia and Oceania. We’ve written about the long tail effect in online languages from an economic perspective, most recently in “The 116 Most Economically Active Languages Online” (Oct13). The newest research shows how these languages are now changing the composition of the most prominent websites’ lists (see “The Rise of Long-Tail Languages,” Dec13). More.

See: Common Sense Advisory

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