You thought most blogs in the world wide web were in the English language? Actually you are wrong as Japanese is the top blogging language and English comes a close second in rank. The State of the Live Web, April 2007 is released and its time to dig into the data!
Here are some language related findings from the report.
- Japanese retakes the top spot from the last report, with 37% (up from 33%) of the posts followed closely by English at 36% (down from 39%).
- There was movement in the middle of the top 10 languages, highlighted by Italian overtaking Spanish for the number four spot.
- The newcomer to the top 10 languages is Farsi, just joining the list at #10.
- Both English and Spanish are more global languages based on consistency of posting through a 24 hour period, whereas other top languages, specifically Japanese, Chinese, and Italian, are more geographically correlated.
- Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%, English second at 33%, Chinese third at 8%, Italian fourth at 3%, Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
- English the most even in postings around-the-clock
Thus, it makes sense to translate your blog into multiple languages. Though I have been unable to fix the Google 403 errors associated with WordPress translation plugins, the option of Human Translators seems superior to automatic blog translation tools now.