The moment a website is launched into cyberspace it’s global. But that doesn’t mean every website on the World Wide Web has been created with global audiences in mind.

We reported about the Web’s first fully non-Latin URLs on this fair blog a couple of weeks ago. And when you consider that 40% of the world’s internet population are in Asia – indeed, China has 30% more internet users than the US – the need to go global by thinking ‘local’ is becoming increasingly imperative when it comes to website marketing strategies.

A 2010 web globalisation report card by ByteLevel has picked out the best global websites using key performance criteria and, not surprisingly, the likes of Google and Facebook rank highly on the ‘global’ stakes. But there are a few surprise brands in there too.

Among the key criteria used to define a ‘good’ global website, is one that has significant global coverage (languages), global navigation (localised content that’s easy to find) and global consistency (the brand identity and website is supported by global templates, whilst offering truly localised content that is relevant to users’ locale and culture).

tags: Best Global Websites