Russian became the second most frequently used language on the Internet in 2013, having passed Germany by a narrow margin, according to a report by analytical company W3 Techs.
The company counted the number of sites in each language regardless of the number of hits the sites get, Vedomosti reported Friday.
The analysis revealed that 54.7 percent of Internet sites are in English, while Russian and German sites each constitute 5.9 percent of all sites. Spanish language sites make up 4.7 percent of the World Wide Web, while 4.5 percent are in French and 4.4 percent in Chinese.
The company predicts that Russian will continue to be the second most popular language in the Internet given the rapid rise in the number of Russian language sites in recent years. In 2011 only 4.1 percent of all sites were in Russian, while German-language sites constituted 7.7 percent of all sites.
However, Russian-language sites are in sixth place for number of hits. The rating consisting of 1,000 most frequently visited sites consists primarily of Internet resources in English, Chinese, French, German and Japanese languages, in descending order.
Researchers note that Russian-language sites constitute 89.8 percent of all sites in the .ru domain and 88.7 percent in the .su domain.
Russian is also predominant in the countries of the former Soviet Union, with 79 percent of sites in the Ukraine being in Russian, 86.9 percent in Belarus, 84 percent in Kazakhstan. Russian language is also heavily used on sites in the Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan domains.
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