There are now 231.5 million Websites according to Netcraft. But last year the number of new sites added to the Web slowed down to 29.9 million, from 48.7 million in 2007. Royal Pingdom went through Netcraft’s server surveys to come up with the chart above, which shows the increase or decrease in the number of Websites for every year going back to 1996.
The growth of the Web so far can be broken down into two five-year cycles, where every year the growth rate gets bigger until there is an economic downturn, when the growth rate takes a breather. In 2001 and 2002 the growth slowed and even went into negative territory, and again in 2008 there was another slowdown in the number of sites added to the Web. It stands to reason that the number of new sites will ebb and flow with the global economy, but it is not clear that there is any direct correlation. For instance, so far in 2009 we’ve added a whopping 46 million sites, many of them Chinese blogs. The total for the year will almost surely be much greater than the 2007 increase, and is already larger than all the sites added in 2008.
Does that mean the global economy is already on a rebound or simply that countries like China and Russia are embracing the Web in a big way? These numbers also raise the question of how many sites does the world need—500 million, one billion, ten billion? Maybe the upper limit is the number of people who are on the Web, which is estimated between 1 billion worldwide (comScore) and 1.6 billion right now. Maybe it is more. How many Websites do you have?
Here are the top countries by Internet population according to comScore. All the growth is coming from China, Russia, Brazil, and India. (Growth is compared from July, 2008 to March, 2009 for an apples-to-apples comparison because comScore changed its methodology slightly in July, 2008).
|
Internet population |
Jul-2008 |
Mar-2009 |
% Chg |
| World-Wide |
949,583 |
1,092,598 |
15% |
| China |
161,015 |
192,000 |
19% |
| United States |
162,619 |
163,825 |
1% |
| Japan |
56,786 |
63,152 |
11% |
| Germany |
35,212 |
39,183 |
11% |
| United Kingdom |
35,223 |
36,781 |
4% |
| France |
31,842 |
35,747 |
12% |
| India |
29,817 |
33,340 |
12% |
| Russian Federation |
26,355 |
30,710 |
17% |
| Brazil |
25,288 |
29,081 |
15% |
| South Korea |
26,251 |
27,901 |
6% |
| Canada |
21,587 |
22,023 |
2% |
| Italy |
19,689 |
21,174 |
8% |
| Spain |
16,562 |
18,456 |
11% |
| Turkey |
N/A |
17,390 |
N/A |
| Mexico |
12,037 |
12,914 |
7% |
I have a feeling once the global economy turns the corner and starts to heat up we are going to see a new resurgence in web site growth from the Indian and Chinese markets (as well as Africa.) The cheaper and more functional hardware becomes, the more accessible it becomes which allows more people to get online. It is only a matter of time before we reach 1 billion websites. My guess is 2016.
Yes India and China are definitely where the growth is coming from. In those countries the number of people online is still a small minority.
There is a silent revolution going on, where the epicentre of the global economy is shifting toward India and China, and online companies would be wise to take advantage of this trend.
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From India (currently working in Singapore)
Anjali Sen
Less websites does not = less online activity
There are many more ways to expand your online activity without creating a website than their use to be.
Unless internet gives some real outputs to individuals, it wont grow. People read news on nnet coz it affects them. But when people realize a website wont give real o/p (like a date for the weekend) they get disillusioned and ditch. Entertainment is one thing, but net has long way to go in that.
I dont wish to debate third world, but there people use cyber cafes more than mobile. Or you can say shared comp.
India’s growth rate is on par with France and doesn’t compare to China. Most third worlders are accessing through crappy mobiles, so in the grand scheme no other market comes close to the US. Don’t see that changing for decades.
A Lot of growth in recent years came from new blogs. Since Facebook use is widespread, no one needs to create a personal website, hence less blogs and less overall new websites.
DUH.
Great point!
Not only that, but Adsense pays crap these days. So no one will spend the time to write good blog posts.
i think its due to recession, ppl dont have time anymore write blogs or maintain their website that brings no profit….
i think its due to recession, ppl dont have time anymore write blogs or maintain their website that brings no profit….
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With companies going bust/pulling from market, their websites will go with them. If you look at the 2000-2003 figures you can expect a decrease, but I wonder if there will be an increase in personal sites?
How do they define a website? Are they including parked domains in these stats?
I think they are counting live servers. You can check on Netcraft.
Ok, they do seem to make some effort to exclude inactive sites according to this page. “Only sites with distinct content will be counted”
http://survey.n...007.html#active
If that’s true, I would expect that the number of new “sites” to increase this year from last year. There is a huge push right now for many domainers (domain name investors) who had only parked their domains last year to monetize their sites better by building out their best domains. If this happens, the number of sites should increase being these parked domains are being actual sites.
Yeah, same question here.
I have a lot of websites:
- my linkedin website,
- my twitter website,
- my blog at blogspot,
- my facebook feed,
…
Did they count those, or just my domains (I have two) ? Because I know a lot of people who don’t own their own domain but have lots of website as well. Japan for instance have more than 200M blogs (yes, that’s more than the actual number of its inhabitants).
This graph make absolutely no sense to me.
I would think we’re just taking a breather, growth has been rapid for the last few years
I’m expecting more websites to be put up especially personal sites or blogs..
They are obviously not including facebook, myspace, twitter or similar profiles in these stats otherwise it should show a lot more than 231.5 million websites. I am guessing though that they are including all the subdomains from sites like blogspot.com or sites hosted by wordpress, if this is the case these stats are flawed. Why should a personal blog (with domain name) count as a website but not a blog and profile hosted under myspace?
“All the growth is coming from China, Russia, Brazil, and India.”
You provide the numbers but then ignore them.
It would be more accurate to say that China is the real engine of growth. The other BRIC countries are significant but they are not more significant than Japan, Germany and France.
The real surprise is that India is not a more important source of growth, given its supposed strengths in IT and the size of its population.
The figures analysed.
In percentage terms:
1. China 19%
2. Russia 17%
3. Brazil 15%
4. France 12.3%
5. India 11.8%
and lets not forget Germany, Japan and Spain on 11%
In numerical terms:
1. China 31,000
2. Japan 6,366
3. Russia 4,355
4. Germany 3,971
5. France 3,905
6. Brazil 3,793
7. India 3,523
I am thinking :
2009 – – 20,5 M
2010 – – 16,3 M
2011 – – 11,8 M
2012 – – 7,2 M
. . . indeed individuals will naturally cease efforts in areas that do not create a return on effort or time. That return can be in the form of money, but also many minds are stimulated by connecting with new people and even just looking at how many “followers” or “friends” they have. However, that wears off over time as an overwhelming majority of “social” relationships don’t materialize into anything of lasting or significant value.
Not the case across the board, for example there are lasting opportunities for businesses, especially as solutions evolve and the clear leaders surface and those leaders will be the ones that create solutions people value enough to pay for. (simply speaking to my predicition of the majority).
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I am not surprised, i was wondering when this would become apparent, the web is just the evolution of the communication revolution that happened after the internet, web sites are not a meaningful measure of that evolution, counting web sites/servers even domains is the wrong way to track the evolution. Some comments here seem to understand what the data means. I predict that there might be another spike in web sites count but after that it will probably stagnate. What does it mean? It means the web is old now
When people loose jobs because of financial crisis they tend to come to web sites either to learn and get better knowledge and command over their subjects .
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It’s cyclical.. like sunspots.
Growth will take off again – be next year every [modern] cell phone will be a web host and you will have an office web site, a desktop web site, and a phone web site – so growth will spurt again.
They should do one where they measure crap websites. I’m sure they make up 90%.
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The reduction in the number of new sites may be due to the consolidation of services at the top end of the web.
One can now create an adequate online presence via the social network and blog sites, without a url of one’s own.
In many cases a greater audience is created in this way.
In my opinion as the owner of an Indian website, I feel that in the shakedown of the present economic climate, there will be negative growth in the number of new websites in mature markets such as the US, whereas markets like India will maintain there growth rates. In short this is because maintain financial viability on the Internet is hard at the best of times, but overheads in places like India are much lower.
I really liked your post.
There is no way that Internet growth will stop it just taking breathe to grow much faster than before.
is the mobile web counting in these numbers? maybe there some surprise there
Are they counting the mobile web as well, maybe there are interesting data to consider
I think they are counting live servers. You can check on Netcraft.
I feel that in the shakedown of the present economic climate, there will be negative growth in the number of new websites in mature markets such as the US, whereas markets like India will maintain there growth rates.
There is no slowdown in web growth, due to recession growth is breathing.
There is no slowdown in web growth, due to recession growth is breathing. But there is no way to escape from market.
One can now create an adequate online presence via the social network and blog sites, without a url of one’s own.
In many cases a greater audience is created in this way.