Top 8 countries to use CPF

I was just doing a little research on putting another ad on CPF and the Alexa page was working (hadn't been able to access it from Aus for a year for some reason) and was surprised to see the top 8 countries to use CPF.

United States41.3%
South Africa14.8%
Germany12.0%
China6.2%
India3.7%
United Kingdom2.8%
Australia2.3%
Canada1.8%


Obviously I expected the US as top, but couldn't believe where Canada was. What surprised me was I rarely see posters mention South Africa, China or India, but these countries represent a quarter of users! Are there a lot of South Africans, Chinese and Indians lurking?



Full details are here: Alexa

That is very interesting. I would have thought Canada, the UK, and Austrialia would have had more CPF members than China and India, and South Africa.

You have to keep in mind that those numbers are based on IP #s. Just because a user is connecting from one country, they could be connecting through an internet provider from another country. It's all in the routing. I know that sometimes my IP will show that I'm connecting from NY as that is where my service provider is based out of. I couldn't be farther from NY if I tried... although I do wish I was in NY... :sigh:

Good point Greta, maybe South Africa is some sort of hub. Being an island most Aussies connect through an AU ISP so didn't occur to me of using an ISP out of the country. Just odd as I notice the Aussies who post obviously, but also see a lot of Canadians & UK posters but rarely remember seeing Chinese, Indian or South African posters. It also might be a language concern, if posting from India or China, people may not be confident enough in their english to post.

Why don't we have a poll some everyone can state what country there from.

Greta said:

You have to keep in mind that those numbers are based on IP #s. Just because a user is connecting from one country, they could be connecting through an internet provider from another country. It's all in the routing.

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Very true.

Although I live and work in Canada, I work for a US company.
When I access sites (from the office) that use targetted ads, I end up seeing ads geared for American customers.

My IP used to say I was coming from Australia. That's a few hundred miles from as wrong as possible while still on Earth.

Wow, that's messed up.

Glen C said:

Are there a lot of South Africans, Chinese and Indians lurking?

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Yeah.. like almost all the Chinese light vendors? :laughing:

That would explain why the but out "better" lights. They know what everyone wants.

There are a lot of Tor nodes in Germany iirc. I am surprised at South Africa though, Ill have to thinking on why we see traffic apparently coming from there as I really don't think there are that many S Africans hanging around CPF. China doesn't surprise me a bit being where it is. But again I'll have to look around for why indian IP's are connecting so much. hmmmm

There's a lot of false hits from Sweden... Whenever I check CPF from work, my connection is routed internally from the Netherlands to Sweden, so to the outside world, it looks like I'm online from Sweden.

In some cases this is really annoying, as some websites autodetect your locale and serve content based on that. So I often get sites in Swedish, making it pretty difficult sometimes to switching back to either dutch or english.

PhantomPhoton said:

But again I'll have to look around for why indian IP's are connecting so much. hmmmm

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Maybe it has to do with outsourcing or relocating of datacenters & serverparks etc? A lot of companies are outsourcing more and more to India. Best known are the helpdesks & callcenters, but I think it might be happening with other services too.

Does not suprise me at all when think about the fact that 1 out of 4 people in the earth is chinese, 1 out of 10 people in the world is indian. But seeing south african at rank 2 is somewhat suprising.

Greta said:

You have to keep in mind that those numbers are based on IP #s. Just because a user is connecting from one country, they could be connecting through an internet provider from another country. It's all in the routing. I know that sometimes my IP will show that I'm connecting from NY as that is where my service provider is based out of. I couldn't be farther from NY if I tried... although I do wish I was in NY... :sigh:

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Greta......... Not Another Displaced Yankee!!

If I could take the cold weather any more, I wouldn't be "hidin out" it TX.

Nothing against TX, they are really great people! but I'll Always be a Yankee. :shakehead

Well that explains why it's so hard to get people to show up for CPF meets in Canada. :laughing:

I know my connection gets routed all over the place sometimes I'm showing Quebec, NY, Chicago and I think once I remembered seeing Texas. It's all over the place .