A new study out Thursday by Nielsen//NetRatings says the vast majority of people visiting the most trafficked sites on the Web have one thing in common - they're all men.

"With the exception of the US and Canada, the Internet population in every country Nielsen//NetRatings measures is predominantly male," says Nielsen//NetRatings chief of measurement science and analytics Richard Goosey. "The proportions of the audiences for these top properties are often heavily male, going well beyond the general male to female proportion of the overall population. However, the gender proportion for each property in the Americas region is more balanced, reflecting the strong female audiences in the US and Canada."

When Nielsen//NetRatings talks about the Top 10, they mean companies like (in order of popularity) Yahoo!, MSN, AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Lycos, Google, Amazon.com, About-Primedia, eBay and CNET Networks. To be even noticed for this survey the companies had to pull in 8-figure unique audience numbers and have presences in several countries.

The survey conducted in November found that there is at least a 6 percent spread overall between the numbers of male over female users. In some cases that disparity reaches as much as 60 percent.

The survey was performed across 29 countries comprising more than 91 percent of the global Internet audience.

Nielsen//NetRatings Global WebWatch Gender Breakdown (Unique Audience), By Region, November 2001

The MSN numbers do not include data for NineMSN, T1MSN and XtraMSN.

The Milpitas, Calif.-based Net research firm found CNET Networks and eBay showed the most marked tendency toward male users, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific.

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The results are from Nielsen//NetRatings' new Global WebWatch service, which lets clients analyze the audience measurement data according to their specifications, by time period, country, and demographic sub-set.

"A balanced audience is desirable, serving as an indicator that the domains and sites contained in that property combine to provide the proverbial 'something for everyone,'" says Goosey. "While one of the beauties of the Internet is that specific sites can be wildly successful in targeting specific genders and age groups, at the property level Internet companies become like any other mass media - they must attract as broad an audience as possible in order to remain viable for the long term."

Goosey says companies need to know who their audience is, how their site is currently performing in areas that are important to their business, and whether it makes sense to expand to other countries.

The report also says the number of Internet sessions dropped slightly in November, along with the number of page views per month and the duration of a page viewed.

"However, the time spent per month grew by more than 6 percent, equating to nearly 35 more minutes spent online in November," Goosey said. "There was a similar increase in time spent per surfing session and in the domains and page views per surfing session, indicating a jump in online shopping activity in preparation for the holidays."