Internet analyst firm comScore has published its latest overview of European internet usage by country for December 2011. It reveals that 381.5 Million unique visitors went online during the month (up from 373.4m in September 2011) and stayed there for a monthly average of 27.5 hours per person (up from 26.4 hours in September 2011). By comparison the global average is 1.444bn visitors and 24.4 hours.

A snapshot of European internet usage in the 18 largest reportable markets found that Russia had the biggest online audience (53.3 million users). However, the UK continued to show the highest engagement, with 37.5 Million internet users (down from 37.2 in September 2011) spending an average of 35.6 hours online during the month (unchanged from September 2011).


The UK is known to be one of the strongest internet economies in Europe (ecommerce) and the amount of time that people spend online could be seen as a partial reflection of that. Part of the reason we do so well in the online world is because we got a firm head start on the deployment of affordable consumer internet access.