Web reaches new milestone: 100 million sites

Are your Web surfing fingers getting tired?

There may be a reason. Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, says a mammoth milestone was reached during the month of October.

"There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," said Netcraft's Rich Miller.

"Within that, there are some that are busy and updated more often, and that represents the active sites, which are at about 47 or 48 million," he said.

Bloggers, small businesses, and simplicity have combined to create the dramatic growth of sites, much of it just in the past two years.

"The bottom line is it's much easier to create a Web site nowadays, and it's much easier to make money with a Web site," said Miller.

Netcraft uses the domain name system to identify Web sites, check how many of them are in a particular location, such as what operating system and Web server software they're running, and then publishes its information in a monthly report.

There were just 18,000 Web sites when Netcraft, based in Bath, England, began keeping track in August of 1995. It took until May of 2004 to reach the 50 million milestone; then only 30 more months to hit 100 million, late in the month of October 2006.

By Marsha Walton
CNN