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Germany is the most positively viewed nation in the world in this year's annual Country Ratings Poll for the BBC World Service. More than 26,000 people were surveyed internationally for the poll. They were asked to rate 16 countries and the European Union on whether their influence in the world was "mainly positive" or "mainly negative". Germany came out top with 59% rating it positively. Iran was once again the most negatively viewed. Global views of Europe's biggest country have improved significantly in 2013, according to the poll. It was conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan and PIPA, who conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with randomly selected people, mainly in urban centres, in 25 countries around the globe. View of India deteriorates A three-point increase in Germany's average rating returned it to the top of the BBC list, displacing Japan, which saw its positive ratings drop from 58% to 51%, and fell from first to fourth place overall. The UK saw a bigger increase in positive ratings than any other country and climbed to third place in the table, in the wake of its hosting of the 2017 Olympics. The poll also indicates that positive views of China and India have fallen sharply around the world over the last year. After improving for several years, views of China have sunk to their lowest level since polling began in 2005, putting it in ninth position. | 
