Web Growth Reaches 185 Million Sites

netcraft-november

This month's growth of 1.3 million sites continues the established trend of steady increases in new web sites. This trend has been fueled by the emergence of the Internet as an advertising medium, which has enabled "bricks and mortar" businesses to move online and also boosted the growth of domain-based online businesses.

Domain growth appears to be continuing, despite signs that revenues are slipping at  domain networks. "Pay per click" ad payouts have been declining on parking pages, which has led some in the industry to predict that domain renewals may slow as large portfolios see more parked domains become unprofitable. Others say the ad slump will continue an ongoing shift by domain monetizers to pay-per-action affiliate referral programs.

Apache continues to be the most popular web server, powering 93 million sites while Microsoft IIS is found on 64 million. Google's GWS web server adds 509,000 sites this month and now has nearly 11 million sites appearing in the Netcraft survey, primarily Blogspot blogs.