The Netcraft May 2004 Web Survey has found more than 50 million websites on the internet. They received http responses from 50,550,965 sites.
The milestone caps a period of revived growth for the Internet, coming just 13 months after the survey crossed the 40-million mark in April, 2003. By comparison, it took 21 months for the Web to expand from 30 million to 40 million sites.
May was the 16th consecutive month of growth for the Web after a two-year shakeout to absorb the collapse of the dot-com and telecom industries. The upward trend resumed in February 2003, when we detected 35.8 million sites; about the same number as the Dec. 2001 survey.
The rebound in total sites tracks the recovery of the larger Internet economy, as viable companies and business models have emerged from the wreckage of the Internet bubble. Common to the Internet Economy 2.0 is a focus on efficiency and cost management that was largely absent during the boom years of 1998-2000. Recent months have seen reports of strong growth for online ad spending, paid subscription sites, online retail spending, and even modest revivals in venture capital investment and dot-com hiring. On the M&A front, TechDealmaker reported 35 Internet-related acquisitions for the week of April 22-28, valued at $1.5 billion. And, on Thursday Google announced its long-awaited stock offering, leading a pack of web companies readying IPOs.
To give you an idea the first survey in August 1995 found 18,957 hosts. The April 1997 survey 1 million sites, February 2000 gave 10 million results, September 2000 gave 20 million results, and July 2001 gave them 30 million results.
Like always they also post results on which server software is the most used:
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