In the March 2016 survey we received responses from 1,003,887,790 sites and 5,782,080 web-facing computers. This reflects a gain of nearly 70 million sites, but a loss of 14,100 computers.
This is the second time the total number of sites has reached more than a billion. This milestone was first reached in September 2014, although it was short-lived: By November 2014, the total fell back below one billion, and had stayed that way until the current month. During the intervening period, the total fell as low as 849 million sites in April 2015.
The total number of websites is typically prone to large fluctuations. Domain holding companies, typo squatters, spammers and link farmers can cause millions of sites to be deployed in a short space of time, without any significant outlay, but these types of site are intrinsically uninteresting to humans. Netcraft's active sites metric counters the effect of these by discounting sites that appear to be automatically generated. This leads to a more-stable metric that better illustrates real, practical use of the web.
The number of active sites currently stands at just 171 million, meaning around 1 in 6 sites are active. The total fell by 764,000 this month, but nginx stands out as being the only major vendor to increase its active site count — by an impressive 699,000. This has increased its active sites share to 16.4%, while Apache's loss of nearly a million active sites took its leading share down to 49.2%.
Typifying nginx's rise amongst active sites, it also showed the only growth in web-facing computers amongst the major server vendors. This month's survey found more than 15,000 additional computers running nginx on the web, while Microsoft's loss of 30,000 computers was the primary cause of the overall loss in this metric. Thankfully, the majority of this decline consisted of Windows Server 2003 computers, which arguably helps improve the safety of the internet — this server software is no longer supported by Microsoft.
China accounts for over 30% of all web-facing computers that run Windows Server 2003, making it the largest user of this obsolete operating system; however, more than half of this month's Windows Server 2003 losses were seen in China, which has helped to bring this share down slightly.
Apache's computer growth was relatively modest at only 447 computers, but Microsoft's large loss caused Apache's market share to increase by 0.12 to 47.9%. nginx's gain of 15,000 computers took its market share up by 0.30 to 14.3%, but Microsoft remains a fair way ahead of nginx with a 26.6% share of the market.
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
Continue reading...
This is the second time the total number of sites has reached more than a billion. This milestone was first reached in September 2014, although it was short-lived: By November 2014, the total fell back below one billion, and had stayed that way until the current month. During the intervening period, the total fell as low as 849 million sites in April 2015.
The total number of websites is typically prone to large fluctuations. Domain holding companies, typo squatters, spammers and link farmers can cause millions of sites to be deployed in a short space of time, without any significant outlay, but these types of site are intrinsically uninteresting to humans. Netcraft's active sites metric counters the effect of these by discounting sites that appear to be automatically generated. This leads to a more-stable metric that better illustrates real, practical use of the web.
The number of active sites currently stands at just 171 million, meaning around 1 in 6 sites are active. The total fell by 764,000 this month, but nginx stands out as being the only major vendor to increase its active site count — by an impressive 699,000. This has increased its active sites share to 16.4%, while Apache's loss of nearly a million active sites took its leading share down to 49.2%.
Typifying nginx's rise amongst active sites, it also showed the only growth in web-facing computers amongst the major server vendors. This month's survey found more than 15,000 additional computers running nginx on the web, while Microsoft's loss of 30,000 computers was the primary cause of the overall loss in this metric. Thankfully, the majority of this decline consisted of Windows Server 2003 computers, which arguably helps improve the safety of the internet — this server software is no longer supported by Microsoft.
China accounts for over 30% of all web-facing computers that run Windows Server 2003, making it the largest user of this obsolete operating system; however, more than half of this month's Windows Server 2003 losses were seen in China, which has helped to bring this share down slightly.
Apache's computer growth was relatively modest at only 447 computers, but Microsoft's large loss caused Apache's market share to increase by 0.12 to 47.9%. nginx's gain of 15,000 computers took its market share up by 0.30 to 14.3%, but Microsoft remains a fair way ahead of nginx with a 26.6% share of the market.
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
Apache
306,292,55732.80%325,285,18532.40%-0.39Microsoft
278,593,04129.83%317,761,31831.65%1.82nginx
137,459,39114.72%143,464,29314.29%-0.43Google
20,640,0582.21%20,790,7672.07%-0.14
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
Apache
84,790,81649.50%83,825,65849.16%-0.34nginx
27,327,58315.95%28,026,67716.44%0.48Microsoft
17,257,98610.08%17,228,19710.10%0.03Google
13,596,2957.94%13,545,8647.94%0.01For more information see Active Sites
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
Apache
456,48345.65%455,42845.54%-0.11nginx
248,62724.86%251,44025.14%0.28Microsoft
115,44711.54%113,58511.36%-0.19Google
21,0082.10%20,2662.03%-0.07
DeveloperFebruary 2016PercentMarch 2016PercentChange
Apache
2,771,03447.81%2,771,48147.93%0.12Microsoft
1,568,44627.06%1,538,37526.61%-0.45nginx
809,37113.96%824,46214.26%0.30Continue reading...