Geographical Distribution of Zona Latina Users

During the 60-day time period between February 23rd, 1999 and April 20th, 1999, there were 38,362 user sessions to this web site.  A user is identified by a unique IP number.  A user session begins when a new IP number appears in the web log and the session is considered to be terminated if no requests comes from the IP number for over 30 minutes.  IP numbers can be decoded for some basic information through a reverse lookup.  Such information includes the supposed country of origin.

Out of the 38,362 user sessions, 59.1% were from the United States, 20.8% were international (that is, there is a country suffix such as .AR, .BR, .MX and so on in the domain name) and 20.1% were of unknown origin because they were not registered in the lookup table.  This information may not be totally accurate --- while a vast majority of .com domain names are from the United States, there is a small number that exists outside.  The following table shows the distribution of the 79.9% of cases with identifiable country of origin.

At this moment in time, the major role of this web site is that of an information gateway from North America into Latin America.  Based upon the numerous references that we have found and listed in our reverse links page, we would have to assume that this web site is considered a major resource in this regard.

By comparison, the traffic from Latin America is smaller, and we can think of a number of reasons
--- There are many more WWW users in the US than in Latin America;
--- This site is constructed in English, and not Spanish/Portuguese;
--- Lack of awareness of this site in Latin America; and,
--- Lack of interest in information about other countries, resulting in almost exclusive use of national sites only.  There are some national sites (especially in Brazil) that have better coverage of national media than this site.

(posted on 4/29/99 by Roland Soong)

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