# how would they find out how many total pages the internet has? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 15, 2001, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458 "2001-11-15T04:38:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![huskerfootball\_19](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d2c977/32.png) [@huskerfootball\_19](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/huskerfootball_19)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/1 "2001-11-15T04:38:51Z")
I was working on an assignment for a computer class and i read in my book that the internet has approximately 700 million pages. I don’t see how they’d find that out. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/2 "2001-11-15T04:41:07Z")
They might be refering to registered domains, rather than specific pages, in which case the number is readily available. ---
**Author:** ![huskerfootball\_19](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d2c977/32.png) [@huskerfootball\_19](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/huskerfootball_19)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/3 "2001-11-15T04:50:08Z")
no it’s actual pages. the book says “the web has approximately 700 million pages.” ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/4 "2001-11-15T05:27:34Z")
That’s easy. They just went to the [very last page](http://albatros.physics.utoronto.ca/~nvats/lastpage.html) of the Internet, then looked at the page number on the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/5 "2001-11-15T05:29:14Z")
As in any complex system, models are used. The internet as a whole is too complex for an actual page count. Statistics are generated on a limited sample of web pages such as average number of unique URLs per page, likelihood of duplication across similar pages, and the frequency with which a particular link will be found throughout the internet. The larger the sample, the more accurate the model. A company called [Cyveillance](http://www.cyveillance.com) conducted a detailed study in early 2000 with a sample size of 350 million pages and concluded that in July, 2000 the internet had approximately 2.1 billion public pages and was growing at about 7 million pages per day projected to April, 2001. That means that there’s more than 5 billion web pages out there today that are public, non-HTTPS, and less than 200 KB. You can read about Cyveillance’s methodology [here (pdf)](http://www.cyveillance.com/web/us/downloads/Sizing_the_Internet.pdf). Registration may be required. How old is that book anyway? ---
**Author:** ![huskerfootball\_19](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d2c977/32.png) [@huskerfootball\_19](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/huskerfootball_19)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/6 "2001-11-15T05:33:27Z")
copyright 2002, 2000 by pearson education, inc. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Meister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Der\_Meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Meister)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/7 "2001-11-15T05:45:35Z")
7 million pages per day…Jesus… ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/8 "2001-11-15T05:53:45Z")
Yeah. 7 million a day … all porn. 2002 is the copyright on that book? I bet it’s the same text from the 2000 edition, probably written in 1999, and edited by the same boob who messes up the science books every year. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Meister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Der\_Meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Meister)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/9 "2001-11-15T05:56:11Z")
In all seriousness, there are more porn pages out there than any other type of page, wouldn’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![DPWhite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DPWhite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPWhite)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/10 "2001-11-15T06:17:11Z")
©2001 Google - Searching 1,610,476,000 web pages ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/11 "2001-11-15T07:35:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Der Meister \* > \*\*In all seriousness, there are more porn pages out there than any other type of page, wouldn’t you think? \*\* I doubt it. Making a porn page require some efforts. You must make sure that a lot of people can access to your page, you need some material (well…this is probably very easy to find), you must advertize it, etc…And anyway you must be interested in making a porn site. Not that common. I’d suspect that the most common type of page are probably the personnal pages (pictures of your family, pages about your favorite rock band, travel’s journals, etc…), but it’s a wild guess… ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/12 "2001-11-15T13:09:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Der Meister \* > In all seriousness, there are more porn pages out there than any other type of page, wouldn’t you think? Well, I don’t really _know_, but I suspect that porn pages just _seem_ to be ubiquitous because a lot of 'em include popular keywords in the header so that they’ll be over-represented in search results, even for otherwise innocuous terms. Or semi-innocuous terms. ---
**Author:** ![Fibonacci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df788c/32.png) [@Fibonacci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fibonacci)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/13 "2001-11-15T14:15:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by evilhanz \* > \*\*As in any complex system, models are used. The internet as a whole is too complex for an actual page count. Statistics are generated on a limited sample of web pages such as average number of unique URLs per page, likelihood of duplication across similar pages, and the frequency with which a particular link will be found throughout the internet. The larger the sample, the more accurate the model. A company called [Cyveillance](http://www.cyveillance.com) conducted a detailed study in early 2000 with a sample size of 350 million pages and concluded that in July, 2000 the internet had approximately 2.1 billion public pages and was growing at about 7 million pages per day projected to April, 2001. That means that there’s more than 5 billion web pages out there today that are public, non-HTTPS, and less than 200 KB. You can read about Cyveillance’s methodology [here (pdf)](http://www.cyveillance.com/web/us/downloads/Sizing_the_Internet.pdf). Registration may be required. > > How old is that book anyway? \*\* It could be only half that if they counted every time an X10 camera ad popped up. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/14 "2001-11-15T15:27:48Z")
“©2001 Google - Searching 1,610,476,000 web pages” true, but they don’t verify said pages are still online as you can try out some of those links & youll find this out… I don’t see how there can ever be a set number of pages on the net because it changes every second or thousandth of a second. ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/15 "2001-11-15T16:54:56Z")
The whole web can’t ever be determined to have any fixed number of pages. Some sites are dynamic and will spit out thousands of pages from one access request, or just a single page on a different request. Even asking for a total measurement of disk storage across the web won’t give you an adequate index either, any single database can be expanded into an infinite number of different representations, using dynamic pages. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/16 "2001-11-15T21:04:28Z")
This Board is about information. So let’s have less of this argumentative speculation and defeatist ‘we can never know’ crap. There are **7,815,753,691** web pages. I’ve just counted them for you. Now let that be the end of it. ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/17 "2001-11-15T21:14:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ShibbOleth \* > \*\*That’s easy. They just went to the [very last page](http://albatros.physics.utoronto.ca/~nvats/lastpage.html) of the Internet, then looked at the page number on the bottom. \*\* That may be the last page of the Internet, but the end of the Internet is [here](http://www.opaldata.com/the_end/). ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/18 "2001-11-15T22:29:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by huskerfootball\_19 \* > \*\*I was working on an assignment for a computer class and i read in my book that the internet has approximately 700 million pages. I don’t see how they’d find that out. \*\* One, two, three… _ **Crunch!!** _ Three. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/19 "2001-11-15T22:42:58Z")
And, that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this chapter of **Manhattan’s Oral Sex Secrets**. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458/20 "2001-11-15T22:53:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JeffB \* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by ShibbOleth \* > > That’s easy. They just went to the [very last page](http://albatros.physics.utoronto.ca/~nvats/lastpage.html) of the Internet, then looked at the page number on the bottom. > > That may be the last page of the Internet, but the end of the Internet is [here](http://www.opaldata.com/the_end/). I thought the end was [here](http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm). If you Google for “end of the Internet”, you get quite a few such pages. In fact, Google has a [category](http://directory.google.com/Top/Recreation/Humor/Computer/Internet/Dead-End_Pages/) for them plus a subcategory for Impostors (end-of-the-Internet pages with links). BTW, Google has this description for the link I gave: “Congratulatory, overstating, and jussive.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-they-find-out-how-many-total-pages-the-internet-has/93458.md?page=2)