comScore, an internet marketing research company has released an overview of the Internet usage in Europe in March 2011.

363.7 million unique people went online during this period (age 15+), with Germany having the largest internet audience with 49.7 million unique visitors.  Russia had 47.4 million visitors, followed by France with 42.3 million.  United Kingdom was the provider for the fourth highest audience, chipping in 36.2 million visitors.

Users in the Netherlands had the highest engagement, spending 34.4 hours on average – 33% higher than Europe on the whole.  The United Kingdom followed, where the users spent an average of 33 hours online each during the month of March.

*Table produced by Comscore

Top Web Properties in Europe

Google websites were the top European web property in March as they attracted 330.3 million unique visitors and reached 90.8% of the total European internet audience.  They were followed by Microsoft websites who had 272.8 million visitors (75% reach) and then Facebook.com with 234.6 million visitors (64.5% reach).

The highest average engagement amongst the top 30 properties was the Russian social network VKontakte where visitors would spend an average of 405.1 minutes (6 hours 45 minutes) in March.  Russian email provider, Mail.ru was the next most active site, where visitors spent an average of 310 minutes (5 hours 16 minutes), followed by Facebook.com with average of 285.7 minutes (4 hours 45 minutes) spent on the largest social networking site.

*Table produced by Comscore