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Internet Growth in 2005 Sets Record
miller60 writes "Netcraft's Web Server Survey reports that a large gain in web sites in October makes 2005 the strongest year ever for Internet growth. The web has added 17.5 million sites so far this year, eclipsing the previous annual best of 16 million during the dot-com boom in 2000. And that's with two months left in the year. Is this growth for real? Web hosts targeting the small business market (like Yahoo Small Business and Go Daddy) report that business is booming, suggesting that web-wary local businesses are finally going online. But some of the the growth is likely due to domain name business models, with speculators buying large numbers of domain and placing advertising on them."
If this is true, it means there is a site for approximately one site per every 350 people on the planet! Hmmmm, don't know if that's impressive or not. However, some criteria that would make it more clear to me what they're counting as web sites:
As in the blog universe I suspect a large number of these sites are not much in substance. Aside from my curiosity about the realness of this number I wonder what really can be gleaned from it. It is interesting to see the profile and trends of the technology serving the sites (most notably Apache vs. IIS/.NET).
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"You can shovel more shit on the pile, but in the end you still just have a pile of shit."
- Martin Luther, circa 1542
Of the 17.5 million new sites, 17.3 million are blogs about the sad life of a suburban middle-class teenager.
Sure they are still gaining customers - in a market expanding this quickly you have be really bad not to do that.
But apache is winning big style - I wonder how many of those apache boxes are being hosted on Linux or BSD?
...strongest year for Interweb growth.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
I download the zone files about once per month for my surf engine, and noticed that this month the .info zone file shrank by ~30%... Is this past month the anniversary (1-5 year) of the .info TLD setup (ie bulk pre-registrations expiring)? What happened to info for the number of domains to go from 3.7M to 2.7M in one month?
So 17.5 million - 12.8 viagra webs = 5.3 million
Texas Hold'em up: 3,720,000
5.3 million - 3.7 Texas hold'em up = 1.6 million.
So may be there are a lot of new webs, but if there are spam who cares?
My city: Barcelona.
The price of domains has gotten so low, that it's not all that surprising that this is the case. I think godaddy's got domains at just $2 now. I think it was something like $8 just 2 years ago.
If each blog is a "site", then that could explain a bit, considering that huge internet trend probably booming this year.
If not, and it's e.g. a domain name, I personally find this a bit surprising. I thought the growth rate would decline a bit, and even recalling seeing such predictions just a few years ago.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I better get out there and register LeftHandedElvisImpersonator.com before someone else does!!!!!!!
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." ~A. Einstein
It only makes sense that the amount of sites right now is growing exponetially. Every year more people are connected to the web, more people spend more time on the web, and more money is derived from and therefore pumped into the web.
Most human driven growth, in almost any field (print, television, power generation, population sizes) tneds to be exponential, driven by the population increase and the parallel growth of technology and information management.
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
17.4 million of them are on Cogent, so we can't get to them.
It would be interesting to analyze the number of domains per unique content set.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'd like to know--how many spiders.txt files do you have to ignore to come up with numbers like this?
The sites that prey on spelling mistakes and the like are just annoying ...
Learn from my mistake, Dick's Sporting Goods is not dicks.com
Wait until the UN takes over!!
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I think the main factor is likely to be that people are coming to expect that the little restaurant down the street will have their hours and phone number up on the web, and getting someone to put up a site with this info and enough matching design elements that people will know they're in the right place is becoming easy enough that people are doing it.
I've certainly noticed an increase in my ability to find purely informational web sites owned by and about small brick-and-morter businesses, and it makes sense, as more people start to prefer the web over the phone, that this would give an advantage in terms of customers tending to show up when the business is open and feeling confident when leaving the house that the business will be open.
Netcraft is inaccurate as all get out. When things fall off the list, they don't come back no matter what you do. When things get on the list, the don't necessarily fall off the list. Basically it's an unpredictable service that only caters to the largest of hosting companies and ignores all of the rest with extreme prejudice.
With that in mind, I place such small stock in ANYTHING that netcraft says. How can I do otherwise when sites that have been hosted by me for years never show up on netcraft, and sites that died 6 years ago are still showing up as hosted by me.
It may be because of jerks like me: Domain names are so cheap that sometimes I register things like williamshatnerrules.com for no reason except that the domain is funny. One day I might put some content at all the domains I have.
Did I mention that I own williamshatnerrules.com? 'Cause I own williamshatnerrules.com!