• by Masha Geller , February 28, 2002

Nielsen//NetRatings today released its Global Internet Index for January, finding that the unique audiences for Google, Ask Jeeves, and European directory, portal and service provider Wanadoo showed the biggest percentage increases last month among the top 25 global properties, jumping 12 to 13% over December.

“Internet usage soared in January, with surfers spending considerably more time online, viewing more pages, visiting more unique domains and engaging in more Internet sessions in January than they did in December,” said Richard Goosey, chief of measurement science and analysis at Nielsen//NetRatings. “The beneficiaries of this surge in activity were these three properties."

Globally, time spent per month saw a double digit increase in January, rising more than 10% over December. Goosey noted that similarly large increases in the number of sessions per month, number of unique domains visited and page views per month underscore a change from more targeted shopping activity in December to general Internet surfing in January.

“The global active Internet universe went up nearly two and a half percent in January,” Goosey said. “Across 29 countries, this represents nearly six million more people using the Internet in January than in December. A closer look at the active Internet universe by country shows that while the active universe in many countries increased by tens or hundreds of thousands of people, the active universe in both the UK and Korea soared by more than three million people, contributing the majority of the global increase.

“In the UK, this increase is the largest month-on-month growth yet recorded, taking the total number of at-home surfers in the UK to just over 17 million,” he said. “Though we expect to see usage jump in January as people return from holidays, the increase in the UK is particularly outstanding and can be attributed to Christmas PC buyers getting online, the continuing fall in prices and availability of fixed-rate connections, and heavy advertising from AOL and other major players.”