# What percentage of the internet does Google search? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 24, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799 "2003-04-24T05:47:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fuel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df705f/32.png) [@Fuel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/1 "2003-04-24T05:47:42Z")
What about Yahoo and the others? Does it vary according to the search topic? **If I were to type in a random word to Google, what percentage of all the internet’s occurrences of that word would show up on the results?** ---
**Author:** ![Dolomite21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Dolomite21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dolomite21)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/2 "2003-04-24T06:10:04Z")
You can’t pinpoint exactly how the percentage but [here](http://http://www.viz.co.nz/internet-facts.htm) is an interesting site…is not all that up to date but you get the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/3 "2003-04-24T07:09:01Z")
We have no idea how big the Internet is. None. We can make guesses, but we cannot actually count every web page, Usenet post, IRC message, _et cetera_ that comprise the Internet, in all its Awful Glory. Remember, kiddies: The Internet is a lot bigger than just the World Wide Web. It comprises a double-handful of different protocols, all built on the dirt-simple TCP/IP protocols, each of which can shuttle around massive amounts of data between machines. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (http) the Web is based on is one of many. Some of those protocols, like ssh, are encrypted, while others, like NNTP (the NetNews Transfer Protocol used in Usenet), are wide-open to the world. So, we have no clue how much of the Internet Google can see. But I’m sure you can get a few wild guesses. ---
**Author:** ![mudcrutch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@mudcrutch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mudcrutch)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/4 "2003-04-24T07:45:01Z")
Well, as I am writing this, Google claims to search 3,083,324,652 web pages. This figure comes from the bottom of the page at [google.com](http://google.com) You can draw several different figures from that and the ones from the [link](http://www.viz.co.nz/internet-facts.htm) **Dolomite21** provided, depending on whose estimates and what definitions you are using. (link fixed, BTW) So your guess is as good as mine. In reality, though, Google only searches a small percentage of the entire internet. Mind boggling stuff. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/5 "2003-04-24T12:04:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mudcrutch \* > **Well, as I am writing this, Google claims to search 3,083,324,652 web pages.** Which, as **Derleth** points out is a fraction of the Internet and probably a fraction of what Google actually indexes. They have an enormous index of Usenet posts. Do they include that number in their “web page” count? Judging by the number, I’d guess not. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/6 "2003-04-24T12:15:24Z")
I’d imagine Google archives a sizeable amount of Usenet’s history, seeing as how it inherited DejaNews’s archives all the way back to the 1980s. Add to that impressive store the thousands (at a guess) of new messages every day and pretty soon you begin to wonder how many freaking disk drives they must have… Sorry. 😃 By the way, Google does _not_ archive all of Usenet. It completely ignores the newsgroups dedicated to promulgating binary files, such as images and programs. The text-only Usenet is huge, but it isn’t everything anymore. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/7 "2003-04-24T15:02:17Z")
A thread a while back discussed the “deep Internet” or “deep web” (google on them). Even if we confine the discussion to http pages (not the entire Internet), there is still a lot of pages that search engines won’t see because they’re dynamic. Things like Java programs that generate a price quote upon specific demand, sites you have to log in to to see, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Fuel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df705f/32.png) [@Fuel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/8 "2003-04-24T16:14:17Z")
Interesting. I knew nothing about this subject, and I figured that Google only browsed a small amount of the internet. But I had no idea that the size of the internet was such a mysterious, unanswerable question. The Java sites, Usenet and the log-in sites were a good point. **dolomite** , your link does not work. Side question: If we were to try and guess the size of the internet, how would we quantify our guess? In terms of web sites or pages or number of characters, ect.? I’ll search for the deep web when I get a chance. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/9 "2003-04-24T18:44:33Z")
**Fuel** , I’d try to count total number of bytes accessable to the average person. This would include all data available on all publically-accessable machines, including the data transferred on chat networks and Usenet. Remember, again, that the Internet is much, much larger than just the World Wide Web, so counting web pages is only counting a fraction of the Internet’s total size. Not that we’d have a chance in hell of coming up with a good figure, but that’s how I’d attempt to quantify my results. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/10 "2003-04-24T19:18:16Z")
Wow; if the ‘facts and figures’ article linked to (type it in, or use **mudcrutch** ’s correction) is correct, and Google’s web page statistics are correct, Google searches less than 0.00000008% of even web pages! That, or they don’t know how to label a chart properly. . . ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/11 "2003-04-24T20:44:47Z")
Ah… took me a while to figure out just what the heck you were talking about **panama**. Nice catch. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-internet-does-google-search/170799/12 "2003-04-24T20:56:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Derleth \* > \*\* > By the way, Google does _not_ archive all of Usenet. It completely ignores the newsgroups dedicated to promulgating binary files, such as images and programs. The text-only Usenet is huge, but it isn’t everything anymore. \*\* Not only that, but many users prevent their posts from being archived by setting the X-No Archive option to Yes.