100 Million Websites Milestone

There are now over 100 million websites on the Internet (based on domain names and sites) with the biggest growth occuring in 2006. This according to Netcraft, an internet tracking firm. Last month alone, Netcraft reports there were 3.5 million sites created and 27.4 million this year compared to 17 million in 2005. (Source: http://news.netcraft.com.)

The drivers appear to be a combination of the user-generated content sites phenom such as blogs and other community building sites, cheaper domains, and the proliferation of small business sites. Wider internet adoption and greater and cheaper access probably don't hurt either. Geographically, it comes as no surprise that the biggest growth is in the US followed by Germany, UK, Canada, and France. (Source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/11/01/100millionwebsites/index.html?eref=rss_topstories.)

I wonder how many of these 100 million websites are usable and what is the breakdown between desktop versus mobile sites. Clearly, there would be more of the former versus the latter but I expect that dynamic will normalize over time. Wonder as well what the average number of pages are per site...maybe 5 pages and what is the cumulative size of all these websites. Based on about 2002 stats, 5 exabytes of storage space was created in 2002 and the rate of growth is about 30 per cent a year (based on research conducted by University of California-Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems professors Peter Lyman and Hal Varian.)

And who's using these 100 million websites?! According to Pew Internet Group, white, urban, adults between the ages of 18-29, with an almost even mix between males and females, are the biggest group online engaged mostly in the following activities: email, searching for info, directions, health info, product/service, weather, hobby, travel, news, surfing recreationally, etc.

The web has been around long enough that from a design and usability perspective, users have come to expect websites to look and function in certain ways. Websites have certain common GUI elements and acceptable design and usability standards have been established. But things change fast on the web and keep evolving, and like most of you, I look forward to the next 100 million sites.