Internet Tecnology

How Big Is the Internet Really?

The Internet is a busy place. Every second, approximately 6,000 tweets are tweeted; more than 40,000 Google queries are searched; and more than 2 million emails are sent, according to Internet Live Stats, a website of the international Real Time Statistics Project.

But these statistics only hint at the size of the Web. As of September 2014, there were 1 billion websites on the Internet, a number that fluctuates by the minute as sites go defunct and others are born. And beneath this constantly changing (but sort of quantifiable) Internet that's familiar to most people lies the "Deep Web," which includes things Google and other search engines don't index. Deep Web content can be as innocuous as the results of a search of an online database or as secretive as black-market forums accessible only to those with special Tor software. (Though Tor isn't only for illegal activity, it's used wherever people might have reason to go anonymous online.)

Combine the constant change in the "surface" Web with the unquantifiability of the Deep Web, and it's easy to see why estimating the size of the Internet is a difficult task. However, analysts say the Web is big and getting bigger.