The Total Number of Websites on Earth

A Netcraft report  suggests that the total count of websites (including blogs ?) is around 156 million.

total number websites

Since the Netcraft chart says "hostnames", I guess the numbers include blogs as well that are hosted on subdomains of Blogspot, Twitter, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces or WordPress.com.

Now Technorati claims that the total number of blogs alone is currently in excess of 100 million while Netcraft puts Blogs+Websites = 156 million so there’s probably a mismatch somewhere. Anyone got clues ?

Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/the-total-number-of-websites-on-earth/2257/

web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org


Reader Comments

If its domain name it can still be acceptable but now the count. Seeing the technorati list might give more accurate result as the include both direct domain and sub domains separately.

Moreover A site can have folders too which each can be different site.

Sorry Amit, but “hostname” does not mean at all what you’re suggesting it means. Netcraft tracks the usage of web server software, and when it says “hostname”, it means it in the strictest technical sense of a network-attached device, in this case that’s running web server software. Because most small sites are using shared hosting(muliple sites stored on a single server of a hosting company), there are many more websites(and blogs) than there are servers, and thus, hostnames.

What I’m more interested in is the number of active websites. Less than 50% of websites are inactive? Of course, depending on what the exact definition of “active” is, I think this is an dubious number.

i don’t think that blogs excess 100 million, why dont they just say total number of registered domain name and active domain instead of hostname

The graph might not include all the blogs i suppose, as technorati claiming the thing of 100 million blogs is true and total websites is only 156 million?

Hi,

These figures are open to misinterpretation. As Jay Neely commented hostname is not the same as site.

However in its supporting text Netcraft makes it clear that they received survey responses from “155,583,825 sites” but without knowing what the % response was, these figures are even more questionable.

Does anyone have an educated guess on how many e-commerce websites there are.

Hi..it good to see 6 crore sites are active on web market, can any one suggest me how to know active sites for cell phone

I would also be interested in knowing how many ecommerce sites were out there. Although I could imagine that is very hard to get your hands on.

“As Jay Neely commented hostname is not the same as site.”

So a hostname is the same as subdomain? Or is hostname domain? It must be the latter.

I have spent two hours trying to find even ballpark answers to these question(s). In a way that’s kinda cool; but, is ICCANN forthcoming with any help in this area?

Google Custom Search