More than half of all the world's web traffic comes from outside the US, according to a report published this month.

WebSideStory's StatMarket tracking tool found that the US accounts for only 45 per cent of traffic with Germany ranked second with just more than 5 per cent.

Canada, Korea and Japan rank next, all with 5 per cent or below.

"This is a wake up call to businesses that have thought about adopting a global internet strategy, but have yet to implement one," said Geoff Johnston, vice-president of product marketing for StatMarket.

"Although the US still accounts for a major portion of web traffic, we expect that percentage to continue shrinking as more people come online."

StatMarket publishes data gathered from more than 50 million internet surfers a day to more than 150,000 sites around the world.

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