Newsflash: The Web is REALLY BIG!

Internet company Cyveillance has released a study, "Sizing the Internet" that puts the current size of the Web at 2.1 billion "unique, publicly available pages." The study further estimated that the Web was growing at more than seven million pages a day and that the highest rate of growth is yet to come. Yi.

From the press release: "For this study, Cyveillance analyzed Internet pages and examined links, tracking the frequency of unique URLs. To illustrate the power and scope of the technology employed for this ongoing study, a subset of the data collected over a four-month period alone represented approximately 350 million links." They also discovered that the average size of pages was about 10K, that there were an average of 14.4 images on a page (wow, that's a lot) and that about 15% of pages are non-US pages.

They have a white paper discussing their methodology at http://www.cyveillance.com/web/forms/request.asp?form_type=wp &wp_name=sizing_internet, but you have to register for it, and they have a privacy policy that bothers me some. (From their privacy policy page at http://www.cyveil lance.com/web/corporate/privacy.htm : "From time to time, we may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices change at some time in the future, we will post the policy changes to our Web site to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our Web site periodically for updates to this Privacy Policy.") Be aware. (Sure they have the right to change their privacy policy, but they have your e-mail anyway -- can't they notify you?)

You can read the press release with more information about the study at http://www.cyvei llance.com/newsroom/pressr/000710.asp .

Posted to Internet-Web-Statistics