How many websites are on the Internet (as of March 2021)?

As of March 2021, the searchable surface Internet is home to at least 5.38 billion pages according to worldwidewebsize.com, whose researchers come to that figure by running Google and Bing searches on a set of 50 words that are known to be used a specific number of times in print.

For instance, “the” is said to be contained in 67.61% of all documents, so the number of results that contain such target words can be used to extrapolate the total size of a search engine and thus the web.

Curiously, the “indexed” web peaked in early 2020, but has since decreased in size, possibly because search engine indexes have removed millions of spammy pages that are now virtually buried.

Traffic-wise, according to Cisco’s visual networking index, the Internet is estimated to have exceeded 1 zettabyte per year as of 2016 and was on track to reach over 4 zettabytes by 2022, a figure we suspect was reached before then considering the work/study-from-home arrangements that were necessary in 2020.

One last cool fact: the number of connected devices will triple the global population by 2023.