What Percentage of Websites Exist? – The Growth of the Web
The Internet is this magnificent place offering valuable information and useful services.
Did you ever wonder how many websites there are online? Do you think it’s measured in hundreds of thousands or tens of millions? Neither of these options is even close.
While this is an interesting topic, there’s a lot of contradictory information available online. That’s why we decided to once and for all stop the speculation and put our team of investigators on a quest to find the answer to the common question people ask:
How many websites are there?
As of Sep 12, 2022, there are currently over 1.98 billion websites online.
Through our extensive research, we’ve also discovered some interesting facts related to the number of websites and internet stats in general.
Scroll down to see the growth chart of how many sites are from 1990 to 2021, what the most popular CMS is, what the most popular eCommerce solution is, and what the most popular websites and blogs are.
The 1st website and the 1st domain name
The World Wide Web as we know it is rooted in many technologies, which makes it hard to pick the very first website. However, we have to start somewhere, and what better place to start than with Tim Berners-Lee and his team of coworkers at CERN?
They are responsible for creating the HyperText Transfer Protocol in 1989, a protocol that enabled servers and clients to communicate.
This same team also released the first text-based browser, as well as created and launched the first website, which was a one-pager.
This web page was the first online guide about creating web pages, and as you might’ve guessed, it was text-only. Nowadays, modern technology (such as website builders) lets people create their blogs or website without any technical knowledge.
What paved the way for good-looking websites was the web browser Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and his colleagues at the University of Illinois created and released Mosaic in 1993. It was the first web browser that allowed users to use “point-and-click” graphical manipulations.
Andreessen also co-founded Netscape Communications Corporation, the company behind Netscape Navigator, the most popular web browser of the 90s.
Domain name registration wasn’t available until 1985. However, previous to that, some companies created and used domain names for intranet. The first one was Nordu.net, created on January 1, 1985. It was the domain of Scandinavian research collaboration.
The first registered domain title goes to Symbolics.com, a domain belonging to a computer systems company in Cambridge, Mass. It was registered on March 15, 1985, followed by Bbn.com, registered on April 24, 1985.
Number of websites and their growth from 1991 to 2022
Let’s examine What Percentage of Websites Exist? The Growth of the Web
According to Internet Live Stats, there are currently over 1.98 billion websites online. Compared to what would be the beginning of the World Wide Web in 1992, when there were only approximately 15.000 websites online, this is quite an increase.
number of websites in the world
The trend of website numbers increasing continues year after year. By 2014, there were 1 billion websites online. It took only five years to almost double that number.
However, not all of the 1.98 billion websites currently online are active. It’s estimated that less than 200 million of that number are active.
How many domain names are there?
We all know that domain names are deeply connected to websites, but most people don’t know how domains work and what a domain name is. In most cases, people think they are the same as web hosting providers.
The domain is the address each website has and is located in the URL of the browser. Domain names are the IP of a website, but these names are converted into logical names instead of numbers.
The most popular domains are top-level domains or TLDs such as .com, .net, .org, and so on. These are generic domain extensions that take the highest spot in the system. Even though sites carry these extensions, they have fully customized names that go in front of them.
The third quarter of 2021 reported 364.6 million top-level domains. This number has been growing ever since the domain name system was introduced in 1985, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
From all the top-domain registration 172.1 million belong to .net and .com. That’s a 2 million and a half decrease from the second quarter of 2021. Since the start of the year, these top-domain registrations decreased by around 6 million.
Here’s how top-level domains are ranked based on the number of domain names they currently have:
.com – 158.6 million domain names
.tk – 24.7 million domain names
.de – 17 million domain names
.cn – 15.3 million domain names
.net – 13.5 million domain names
.uk – 11 million domain names
.org – 10.4 million domain names
The number of TLDs increased by over 4 million compared to 2019, which means that the total number of domain names has increased by around 1.1%. That’s just another statistic showing that many people buying new domains and the number of websites is still growing.
How many websites use CMS?
Not all websites are created in the same way. Some are coded and designed from scratch, but many use a CMS. CMS stands for Content Management System, a specifically designed platform that facilitates website creation and publishing.
There are over 10 CMSs available, which makes this market quite competitive. You probably know some of the names, such as WordPress, Joomla, and Wix.
Let’s see how many websites use a CMS and which CMSs are the most popular.
According to BuiltWith, there are currently over 77 million websites that use a CMS, and the most popular CMS by far is WordPress.
Here are the top 5 CMSs:
WordPress – is the favorite CMS option overall. There are currently over 35 million websites using WordPress, which accounts for 44% of all websites that use a CMS.
Wix – Wix falls in second place. Over 7 million websites currently use Wix, which is 7% of all websites that use a CMS.
Progress Sitefinity – is becoming more and more popular every day. It currently powers over 3.5 million websites or 5% of the CMS market.
Squarespace – In fourth place, we have Squarespace, currently powering 2.9 million websites (here are examples), or 4% of the CMS market.
Plesk– Finally, with a 2.6% market share, we have Plesk. There are currently 2.3 million websites using Plesk.
How many websites on the web use eCommerce solutions?
eCommerce is a very lucrative industry, with one of the largest market sizes in the world. According to Statista, the eCommerce revenue forecast tells us that it will grow to 3.1 billion US dollars in 2024. It’s only natural to see many eCommerce websites online, given the number of opportunities in the industry.
The same rule that applies to making regular websites applies to eCommerce sites. You can build one from scratch with one of the available eCommerce solutions. Many of these solutions available let you start an online business.
Let’s dive into the statistics to discover how many websites use eCommerce solutions and which are the most popular ones.
According to the BuiltWith eCommerce usage distribution report, there are currently over 28 million websites using eCommerce solutions, and WooCommerce Checkout is the solution with the largest market share.
The market share breakdown tells us that users value easy-to-use and automatic solutions over more complex ones.
Shopify – is currently the most popular eCommerce solution. It is a specialized eCommerce platform (read Shopify review), and there are currently over 3.8 million websites using it. Shopify’s market share is 15%. -> How to use Shopify
WooCommerce Checkout – is a WordPress plugin, and given the popularity of the WordPress CMS, this is not an unexpected result. WooCommerce powers over 3.5 million online shops, which accounts for 13.6% of the market. -> How to use WooCommerce
Conclusion
Hopefully, this has quenched your thirst for interesting facts about the internet and websites. As you can see, the Internet is a very interesting space that currently hosts almost 2 billion websites, among which only about 200 million are active.
The most popular websites can be grouped into several categories: search engines, social media platforms, online adult entertainment, eCommerce, news, sports, and weather. However, the websites in the top 20 will change as the needs and preferences of the audience change.