How Many Websites Are There in 2023? [Updated Guide]

Greetings dear readers! If this is the first time you’ve landed on TechJury, congratulations! You’ve found the right place to get informed about the digital world. Or… if you were just browsing the site before you found this article - then you already know you’re in safe hands.

If you are here, you are probably wondering how many websites there are. You’ll find the answer to this question really soon, so stay with me.

First off, let me introduce you to some numbers you may find interesting:

• There are 5.03 billion active internet users worldwide.
• About 83% of all websites are inactive.
• The US represents only 4.25% of the world’s online population.
• There are 30 to 50 billion web pages indexed through Google.
• There are only about 200 million active websites.

And now:

How many websites are there, exactly?

Let's find out!

How Many Websites Are There in 2023?

What’s clear is that the number of websites on the internet is growing and it’s growing fast. 

1. How many websites are there in the world? Almost 2 billion.

(Source: Internet Live Stats)

Ever wondered how many websites are there in 2022?

At the time of writing this, the number is 1,971,999,420! However, that figure is snowballing that by the time you read this, it’d most likely have reached two billion.

The surprising thing is that only a fraction of these is active.

2. About 83% of the websites on the internet are inactive.

(Source: Siteefy)

The previous stat sounded extremely impressive, right? It still is. Though, only a small number of these 1.97 billion are active websites.

According to the 2022 website statistics, 17% of all websites are active, making it about 200 million.

3. 59.3% of all websites are written in English.

(Source: WebsiteSetup)

Over half of all websites in the world are written in the English language. But what about the others? The next category was ‘other’ (28.5%), followed by Russian (8.2%) and finally Spanish (4.3%).

4. There are 30 to 50 billion web pages indexed through Google.

(Source: First Site Guide)

Knowing the exact number of websites indexed on Google is critical but can also be quite tricky. The search engine indexes single web pages instead of an entire website, so you can imagine how dynamic and fast-changing the number must be.

However, we know this: currently, 30 and 50 billion web pages are indexed on the most prominent search engine.

5. The current number of internet users is 5.03 billion.

(Source: Data Reportal)

Before we continue with yet another fascinating website stats for 2022, we shall focus on their users.

So listen to this:

As of July 2022, there are:

• 7.98 billion people in the world
• 5.34 billion unique mobile phone users (66.9%)
• 5.03 billion internet users (63.1%)
• 4.70 billion active social media users (59%)

The number of internet users grew by almost 200 million in the last year! So currently, there are over 5 billion people that you can convey your message and present your website to…

6. GoDaddy holds the largest market share in 2022.

(Source: Host Advice)

If you’re looking for an exact market share percentage, it currently stands at 10.37%, making GoDaddy the most popular hosting platform right now. It's also one of the best VPS hosting providers out there. The next most popular providers are Google Cloud Platform and IONOS. However, their figures are still much lower than GoDaddy's at just 6.12% and 4.38%, respectively.

7. China has the highest number of internet users in 2022.

(Source: World Population Review)

Let’s see what the 2022 website stats say:

China leads the ranking with the highest number of monthly internet users, with more than half of its population using the Web. The number currently stands at 1 billion people. Which countries come next? India is second, with a pretty impressive number as well—658 million—but only accounting for 20% of its population.

The US is among the countries with the highest penetration rate—over 90%—but its numbers are slightly lower. That’s why the States fares third on the list with 307.2 million monthly users.

8. Tokelau’s .tk has the highest number of domains.

(Source: Register Owl)

As of June 2022, Tokelau’s .tk is the most popular country code top-level domain worldwide. Currently, it holds about 26 million registrations. China’s .cn comes second with 25.15 million, while Germany’s .de holds third place with 22.88 million domains.

The Dawn of WWW

Now let’s go back in time and see how we’ve come to reach these impressive numbers.

Just 30 years ago, on the 6th of August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first website and therefore introduced the World Wide Web. One year later – in 1992, the number of websites increased “drastically” by 900% - and there were ten websites on the Web.

The total number of websites continued to grow at an incredible pace, until 2010, when the first drop occurred. Out of the 238 million websites in 2009, only 206 million remained a year later.

Look:

The massive rise of these numbers had a few core triggers behind it. One of them is Yahoo’s launch in 1994. And then Google’s, a few years later.

I know some of you are wondering what the most visited site in the world is – yep, we just mentioned it.

It’s Google. (yeah, it was kinda obvious)

The Different Stars on the Web

Alright, the history lesson is over. Let’s look at the state of the web today.

The average time a user spends on a webpage is only 54 seconds. With so much information available and websites to choose from, is it any wonder that number is so low?

On the bright side, for humanity to be able to pump out so many websites, it means we’ve at least figured out how to build them. So let’s take a look at  today’s websites’ inner workings and see what types they can be:

• Static (also known as basic) – They are mostly information sites and usually they are rarely updated.
• Dynamic – They offer fresh content regularly, as they make the publishing process easier.

These are the two main groups of websites.

Some websites use a CMS. (which stands for “Content Management System”) These are dynamic websites, and a CMS allows them to easily create and manage digital content. Examples of vendors for these services are sites like WordPress and Joomla.

Then, there are also web applications, which are similar to dynamic websites, but with one major difference.

With dynamic sites the transaction is one-way – users see the content as a customer (News websites). With web apps, users interact with the site and have an influence over their experience. The website “adjusts” to every user and shows them relevant content.

Ecommerce sites are a perfect example of a web app, showing products, based on consumers’ interests and past searches.

Blogs, on the other hand, may not be so technically sophisticated. Still, they make up for it in terms of pure numbers. According to the latest blogging stats, about 7.5 million new posts are created every single day!

The Website’s “Front Door” - Its Domain Name

Having that many websites around would be a pretty big waste of effort if we didn’t have a way to access them. That’s why we have domain names, which, generally speaking, represent the name of the website.

The domain name has the following structure:

Domain extensions vary a lot. And I mean A LOT! The average user is usually only aware of the most common ones – like .com, .net, .gov and so on. But did you know there are more than 1500 domain extensions? I bet you didn’t. Until recently, me neither.

There’s not really a reason to know all of them, though. Most of them are barely ever used. The top 5 Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), on the other hand, account for over 58% of all websites online. Most often domain names end with:

• .com (54%)
• .ru (5%)
• .org (4.3%)
• .net (3.1%)
• .in (1.9%)

Now:

I know numbers two to five seem like small players in the digital world, but keep in mind we’re talking about a percentage of 1.7 billion. Which still amounts to millions of websites.

More and more new TLDs are being released in an attempt to appeal to customers. As the number of websites hosted online continues to grow, everyone will try to make their site unique, choosing a new gTLD. (though this could be in part because the good .com domains are already taken)

Statistics show over there are 78939479 websites with new gTLD in January 2021.

By the way, I love pointing out interesting facts and also I love talking about money.

So here’s one:

Google paid $25 million to buy the .app TLD in 2015.

Nice.

Websites Are on the Rise!

Weeelll… not exactly.

Actually, although there are more websites registered each year, we should ask ourselves: “How many active websites are there?”

And the answer is:

Not that many.

Actually, the number of active websites has been going down a bit for a while now, despite the increased number of hosted sites.

But here’s the kicker:

Only 25% of all websites on the Web are active right now.

Let me give you an example:

In March 2012 there were over 644 million registered hostnames. Only 188 million of them were active websites.

In December 2019, we had over 1.7 billion registered websites. And only 200 million of them are active.

As of July 2022, there are almost 2 billion registered hostnames. However, the number of active websites among them is once again around 200 million.

So the answer to the question, “How many websites are there?” certainly isn’t as simple as one might think.

What Does the Future Hold?

If you’ve used the web for more than five years, you’ve probably noticed one of the main trends. Websites are becoming simpler.

Back in 1991, was just a web server running on an ordinary computer with a note "Do not power down!" on it. Back then, the semiconductor market was costly and hosting servers also had limited data. Also, every website building process needed some web programmer who can make websites talk with hosting servers.

In 2022, the cost of data was substantially decreased, with web hostings companies offering plans for as low as a dollar monthly. They also come with a variety of add-ons to install website frameworks with one click and build websites without any coding knowledge.

Like everything in our lives, websites tend to evolve. They are becoming easier to use and most of them are now easy on the eye. Creating websites with more minimalistic designs is a trend that will persist.

Website builders further contribute to this new aesthetic. Presently, even non-techies can create a good-looking, minimalistic website.

These builders also allow users to follow the latest trends in website design. Let me introduce you to a few of those, that we’ll soon be seeing on a regular basis:

Single page website

This is my personal favorite trend. These sites have no sub-pages. The “main” (and only) page, however, is ridiculously long. Most of them are informational and/or sales pages and they look amazing.

Artificial Intelligence

Big tech giants like Google and YouTube are already using AI to improve their services.

Some e-commerce sites have already started using it as well. AI will play an even bigger part in website design as time goes on.

Now that you know how many websites are on the internet, imagine if every one of them was interacting differently with every user. Crazy, right?

By the way, if you are interested in AI you can read my AI predictions as well.

Virtual reality sites

VR is already changing the way we interact with online content. Gadgets like VR glasses will eventually provide an immersive online experience. The practicalities of it, however, are not yet clear.

Still, WordPress is already implementing VR content on their websites. It is only natural then, that VR has established itself as a technology trend to keep an eye on.

Conclusion

Well, we didn’t stop at answering  “How many websites are there?”. It’s not just a matter of quantity though, it’s about quality as well.

Hopefully, this article gave you a good idea of the state of the web and where it’s all going. Happy browsing!