The Spanish Revolution on the Internet

During the past year we have seen from Sedo's a dramatic increase of the Spanish language in the world of market domains.

Given that there are 420 million Spanish speakers in the world and 80 million regularly surfing on the Internet, Spanish has become the third most used language on the Web, just behind the Chinese and English.

Currently one out of ten Internet users speak our language, however, this number is growing exponentially. In the past six years it has increased for 231%, while the number of users grown in English on the same period is of 135%. It is possible to get an idea of the importance that our language is gaining in the network by observing the traffic from parked domains.

This increased traffic has been accompanied by a Latin American economic growth in general and Spain in particular. The latter has experienced outstanding growth in the last 30 years making it the eighth largest economy, with a cumulative growth of over 40% only in the last decade.

The economic upturn in Spain and Latin America combined with the extraordinary increase in Spanish on the Web, leads to more and more companies to start investing on advertising in Spanish networks. This results, therefore, greater competitiveness in the key words of our language, which leads to an inevitable rise in PPC for domain owners. Still, Spanish domain market is developing and has not yet reached the ceiling in the world market.

Despite the economic and cultural differences between the variety of Spanish-speaking countries, it is unquestionable that the domains .es have been very well received. Records last year increased by over 400%, one of the highest rates worldwide. Traffic data in relation to this TLD (Top Level Domain) are impressive. These facts show that Spanish people prefer to use this TLD and most surprisingly, it is also becoming a leader in Latin America. Hispanics who reside in U.S does not associate this with Spain, but rather with the Spanish language, identifying the .es like a badge of Spanish content.

Consequently, Sedo data shows that between 15 and 25% of traffic from the portfolio .es comes from U.S.A and Latin America.

Some Latin American countries also have successful ccTLDs. For example, Argentina has surpassed one million domains .com.ar registered ccTLD surpassing the U.S. and Spain among others.

The ccTLD of Mexico .com.mx, is also well entrenched. But yet there is only 170,000 domains .com.mx registered. Considering that Mexico is one of the world's most populous country with more than 105 million inhabitants and by the time a 17% penetration rate, the .com.mx still has much potential.

Another interesting aspect of the Spanish domain market is the growing U.S. Hispanic community, which currently has more than 44 million people (almost the same population as Spain). This figure now represents 15% of the total U.S. population, but this social group is growing at a rate four times higher than the national average. It is estimated that by 2050 reaches 25% of the U.S. population. Only in the area of  Los Angeles 80% of the population between 12 and 19 years of age are Hispanic.

Given its Hispanic population, the U.S. is the third city with the largest Internet users of Spanish-speaking (beaten only by Spain and Mexico). With a purchasing power estimated of 735 billion dollars, the Hispanic market in the U.S. has become crucial for companies and they are acting quickly. The overall Hispanic advertising grew in the U.S. of 20.5% over the last year, as far as online publicity concerns it has resulted better for the PPC industry. 

The most widely TLD used by the  Hispanic is .com, followed by the ccTLDs in their own countries and, as previously mentioned, is the .es that is a symbol of Spanish on the Internet. These may have the consequence that we may see a gradual increase of the domains .us with Spanish words in the future.

Although ccTLDs currently have a major influence in some countries even more popular than .com, this is still the favorite among all domains. The largest sale in Sedo for a domain in Spanish was  viajes.com  for 300,000 euros in 2004. The same year the highest sales among all TLDs was juegos.com for 1 million dollars. This domain was sold again in late October and, although the price was not made public, it estimated that the number round a value 10 times greater than the purchase price of 2004. In other words, juegos.com is one of the 5 highest sales to date in the world of domains.

Article originally published by Antonio March
Director of Spanish and Latin America Markets
Sedo in Spain and Latin America
http://www.sedo.com

 The original text from this article can be viewed in Spanish at:
http://www.comunidadhosting.com/la-comunidad/2003-la-revolucion-del-espanol-en-internet.html