BS: How many web pages are there?

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 06:15 PM

It says 93,000,000 domains as of July

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 06:13 PM

yep...I think...

try here and here..Library of Congress

and here is a related page IP numbers

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Zebedee
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 04:35 PM

mousetheif,

That is a far better question than my original one was, and should be more easily verified.

Anyone know how to find out?

Zeb

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 03:52 PM

Here's a related but maybe easier question: how many domain names are registered?

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 10:18 AM

Google & AltaVista and a couplr of others have complex indexing algorithms to follow links and creep down virtual alleys as best they can...those who wish can also 'submit' pages to them, but there are obviously many pages which the owners don't care or want to be indexed...they just want to be accessed by a few. Thus, there is no easy way to count them. I could get software which would allow my home computer to be a 'server' and tell certaing people to log in and look at pictures of my cat, or access my lists of famous left-handed railroad engineers, but AltaVista would be unlikely to find it.

Then you need to decide what constitutes a 'page'....dynamic, static...etc. (I have always thought that a WWW address should be called a 'book', and the various subordinate parts 'pages'.)

So, due to the way it works, it seems that there at LEAST a couple of billion, and maybe several times that many depending on your definition....I personally am willing to accept Dave O's count as of that time, but I think there are now Umpty-leventeen million more.

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 08:10 AM

Here is my opinion/guess. I would suggest we should count the document templates wich really do exist on the internet but not the pages that these templates generate.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 07:34 AM

Aye, Cold Fusion is a database engine which allows you to build dynamic web pages, so that the information can be changed or added to without modifying the actual HTML. But my intention was to say that even if the pages are created /modified dynamically, they could still fit under the description of "web page" and therefore add to the total - if you can link to it and open it and read it, can you count it with the rest as a web page?

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 07:24 AM

The Mudcat threads come into the category MMario mentioned as they are created dynamically. All the individual posts (and other data) are in a database. I am told that software called Cold Fusion is used to write templates that produce the pages we see.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 05:44 AM

When I was doing my MSc dissertation (developing a Search Engine), I used figures from "Computing" magazine which claimed that there were "around 800 million publicly available pages, of which the best search engines can only index about 16%". (Issue dated 29 July 1999). (It also claimed that in 1997 there were about 320 million web pages.) Note, these are publicly available pages. Think of all the private intranet pages too and the total goes much higher. If you consider that newspaper/broadcasting websites store their information in new pages everyday, the numbers are rocketing up. And I presume each new Mudcat thread constitutes a whole new page!

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 04:32 AM

I recently read that Google finds about (= slightly less than) 20% of all pages. With Alex' information above that makes close to 10,000,000,000 pages.

Wolfgang
(The BS crowd has more or less accepted to leave music question threads alone before they are answered, but when they see the two letter BS at the start of a thread title they just can't restrain themselves)

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 09:54 PM

As of October 23, 2000 at 9:50 PM EDT, the exact number is forty blue million four hundred and three.

Glad to be of service.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Gary T
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 09:10 PM

Go to google and try things like "number of web pages" or "web page tally". Use your imagination and you'll likely find some site that shows a study of this.

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 07:04 PM

My advice: Grab some impossibly high figure out of your hat and defend it vigorously. Who's gonna know?

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:58 PM

Well Zeb, I would guess you use the figure Mousethief quoted and take an upward guess from there taking into account what MMario said about the rate of increase. so where shall we guess: is 1,743,212,876 reasonable?

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Zebedee
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:42 PM

I realise (as I said in my initial post) that I can never find out an exact figure.

I do however half remember seeing a site that (however inaccurately) attempted to estimate a rough approximation.

Just looking for that (or similar) sites

Thanks

Zeb

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: MMario
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:34 PM

There actually is no actual number, as many web pages are transitory and temporary, recreated each time the site is hit. But they are real.

I did once hear an estimate of 8 million new STATIC (only changed by a manual edit) web pages a day.

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: mousethief
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:27 PM

Well, Google claims to search 1,247,340,000 pages. So I expect that's a lower limit (if they're being honest).

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Zebedee
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:26 PM

Peter,

...like hilarious

...like I've not seen that before...

To repeat, if anyone has any links to decent attempts to work out how much is out there, I'd be grateful to hear from them.

Zeb

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Midchuck
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 05:22 PM

To find out, go here, then count back.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Zebedee
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 04:52 PM

Apologies, for not "getting" your humour, but this is a serious question.

If anyone can point me towards decent resources, I'd very much appreciate it.

Thank you.

Zeb

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 04:28 PM

But there is obviously Something For Everybody.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 04:25 PM

I don't know.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: How many web pages are there?
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 04:24 PM

Ummm... All of them??

{~`

Subject: How many web pages are there?
From: Zebedee
Date: 23 Oct 00 - 04:18 PM

An impossible question to answer accurately I know

Any advice on studies, estimates etc appreciated

Zeb