According to monitoring firm Netcraft 2005 is the strongest year ever for Internet growth, as 17.5 million sites have been added.

In the October 2005 survey Netcraft received responses from 74,409,971 sites. Not all of these are 'active' web sites, but the impressive level of growth is partly attributable to the rise in popularity of web blogs and also the number of small businesses who now see owning a website as an essential tool to promote their company and stay in touch with their customers.