China: the world’s largest population of Interweb users. But what’s going on inside the great firewall and what are people interested in?

This is a complex question to answer for a number of reasons; poor industry data, poor publisher’s data, data manipulation, and lack of industry standard measurements. However, one can find a general primer through the use of Google Ad Planner, a free tool (currently in beta) for online marketers researching websites to advertise on. While an interesting tool to use, I don’t think it’s a one-stop shop to find in-depth answers about users in various categories or regions – not just in China but also Australia/US/UK after looking through some data.

According to Google the data is “estimated based on an automated analysis of millions of search queries and site visits,” and combines information from Google opt-in external consumer data panel data, third-party market research, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data and aggregated search data.

Having seen some of the actual traffic figures from a handful of the sites below I can confirm it is indeed an estimate and not 100% accurate. However, it’s not a bad primer if you’re looking for educated guesses on the overall, big picture view of China’s Web landscape.

The following table is a simplified view of the top 50 Web sites in China according to the Google Ad Planner for February 09: