World's best (and worst) websurfers revealed

Nielsen/Net Ratings survey of the browsing habits of 26 countries across the world reveals that South Korea is still well ahead of the pack - beating the UK by a massive 11 hours per month per user.

UK web users are online for just over six hours per month while the South Koreans rack up just over 17 hours per month. They visit an average of 27 different websites in this time compared to the average of 19 sites visited by surfers in the UK. The global average is nine hours per month with this time spent on 15 separate websites. Bringing up the tail of the global league is Ireland - with only four-and-a-half hours online per month.

Richard Goosey, author of the report, said: "South Korea is a big market, almost as big as the UK. It has very high broadband access and an urban population mostly housed in apartment blocks. Because they have cable access they use the net in a very different way. It is not just a source of information but used for entertainment too. Gaming, especially communal gaming, is very popular and cable access means people also use it for things like watching repeats of soap operas.

Goosey noted that more developed internet countries are seeing a reduction in the number of sites visited. New users tend to use a larger repertoire of sites. Belgium has only recently become an internet user and as a country visits on average 28 sites. In comparison, surfers in the US only visit ten.

Yahoo! keeps its place as the most visited site on the web with just under 120 million visitors. Second is MSN with 103 million and AOL Time Warner comes in third with 95 million.

Napster keeps its place at number 17 with a unique audience of just under 16.5 million viewers.

Mexico, Israel and Switzerland were added to the global index for the first time this month.