Connotate Reveals There Are One Billion Web Sites

May 16, 2015

I did not know there were one billion Web sites. Here’s the Web page on Connotate’s Web site which puts me in the know:

The figure has been bandied about by Internet Live States, Business Insider, and the Daily Mail. This number was hit in late 2014 and confirmed by “the inventor of the Internet.” I noted that no one asked Google, an outfit which has a reasonable log file of its crawling activities. Doesn’t Google “know” a number? If the GOOG does, it is not talking or maybe the company is not returning phone calls from people asking, “How many Web sites make up the Internet?”

I navigated to Internet Live Stats on May 16, 2015, and noted this item of information:

I don’t want to rain on the parade, but the number is 900 million and apparently growing. Apparently the “number” can vary. Internet Live Stats says:

We do expect, however, to exceed 1 billion websites again sometime in 2015 and to stabilize the count above this historic milestone in 2016.

So what? Frankly the one billion number is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that a company is using what I suppose is a sketchy number as a way to capture business is a good example of the marketing used by search and content processing vendors.

I know that generating organic, sustainable revenue from search and content processing, information access, and indexing software is very difficult.

The number of Web sites does not mean much, if anything. In an interview with BrightPlanet, I learned that savvy customers narrow the focus of their content acquisition and analysis. Less, it seems to me, may be more. Also, Darpa’s MEMEX project is designed to figure out the width, depth, and breadth of the Dark Net. Is it larger or smaller than the Clear Net?

I prefer value propositions and “marketing hooks” that do not equate size with importance or trigger the fear of not knowing what’s out there? But if it works, it is definitely okay in today’s pressurized sales environment.

There are a billion crazy search and content marketing assertions. Wait. Make that two billion.

Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2015

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.