Ninefold increase in UK Internet visits to Polish websites

Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, revealed that UK Internet traffic to Polish websites has increased ninefold over the last two years. UK Internet traffic to a Hitwise custom category of the top 100 Polish language and community websites increased by 805% between January 2006 and January 2008.

Google Poland most popular overseas search engine page in the UK

Google Poland (www.google.pl ) is currently the most popular Polish website amongst UK Internet users, accounting for 29.7% of all UK Internet visits to the top 100 Polish sites in the UK. "Google Poland is extremely popular in the UK," commented Robin Goad, Hitwise Director of Research. "Google is the most visited website in the UK, so comparing usage of the different Google country sites is a good way of understanding Internet usage patterns."

Google Poland is the third most popular Google country page in the UK after the UK (www.google.co.uk) and international / US (www.google.com ) versions. In January 2008, there were three times as many UK Internet visits to the Polish page as there were to the French (www.google.fr) and Irish (www.google.ie) pages, and ten times as many as to the Australian (www.google.com.au) and Indian (www.google.co.in) pages.

Polish Internet users spread right across the UK

Hitwise demographics data reveals that Google Poland is most popular with young men: 62% of visitors to the site in January 2008 were male, while 85% were under 34 years of age. However, visitors were spread more evenly across the country, with 74% residing outside of London and the south East. "The usage data for Google Poland tells us that most of the people visiting the site are younger men, but also that they are spread right across the United Kingdom. In January, there were as many visitors to the site from Scotland as there were from London," commented Goad.

Community and video sites popular with UK-based Poles

Of the top 10 most visited Polish sites in the UK in January 2008, the second most popular after Google Poland was www.02.pl, a Polish portal page similar to Yahoo! or MSN. YouTube Poland (pl.yoputube.com) was the third most popular site, while another video site Wrzuta (www.wrzuta.pl) was ranked fifth. Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com) was the fourth most popular Polish site in January, when the budget airline received more UK Internet visits than a number of more established airlines including Qantas, American Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.

The latter half of the top 10 list is dominated by Polish community sites, including PolishDating.co.uk, a dating website serving the Polish community in the UK and Ireland, at number six. The Polish version of Wikipedia (pl.wikipedia.org) was at number seven, and is currently the most visited foreign language Wikipedia site in the UK. The eighth and ninth ranked Polish sites were both community sites – Szkocja, a site serving the Polish community in Scotland, and Polish Elite Board (peb.pl), a Polish message board. The final site in the top 10 was Polish news site TVN 24 (www.tvn.pl).