FAQs
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How many pages are there on the WWW? While the exact number of web pages is unknown, an educated guess (as of 2003) would be between 3 and 6 billion pages. These are pages publicly accessible to search engines. Recently the Internet Archive, which is attempting to store archival copies of all Internet pages, announced that its Wayback Machine had 33 billion pages. 11 billion of these pages are now keyword searchable. It is also estimated that about 7 million new pages go online each day. |
How reliable are these webpage statistics?
The most current Internet statistics are closely guarded and expensive business information. Our estimates are based on information reflecting the Internet from 2000 - 2003. Additionally, there are no common methods for counting the number of pages on a website. Some count by automatically 'pinging' an 'ip' address. If the address replies, it is considered valid. This kind of count does not distinguish between duplicate pages of information. The OCLC 2002 study estimated that there were 3,080,000 public websites, averaging 441 pages each. The OCLC harvested a representative sample of websites, and used this sample as the basis for making inferences about the Internet as a whole. The Cyveillance.com study considered 350 million links over a 4-month period in the year 2000. From this sample they built their model and made their predictions. Cyveillance claims their methodology improves reliability, but keeps the exact mechanics of their methods secret. We are left with a best guess scenario that lacks statistical reliability, but does give us a sense of scope when considering the free public web.
Authored by Dennis O'Connor 2003-2004