I have been thinking that we have overlooked a serious limitation in
our craze to build websites without questioning that there will be
enough web visitors go around for all websites on the Internet.  My
premise for saying this is that mathematically speaking there is
simply NOT ENOUGH visitors (measured in hours/minutes spent browsing)
on the Internet today that can justify all the expense of building
websites (especially with the intention of making money).

What I like to find out therefore is, any data/statistics that
attempts to estimate the possible numbers of hours web users spend on
the Internet. Then divide the number with the number of websites
(estimated) that compete for this audience.  Another possible
indicator is to find out the average number of visitors a websites
gets.

Thanks!

Dear shiferaw,

The media research agency, Nielsen NetRatings, calculates the global
Internet usage behaviour based on regular surveys. You can view these
worldwide figures here:

http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/hot_off_the_net.jsp

According to these statistical data as of June 2002, an average
Internet user visited 40 web pages during a surfing session, spending
not more than 47 seconds for examining a single page. Furthermore,
this average net user spent 9 hours, 37 minutes, 29 seconds online in
the said month, or 31 minutes, 17 seconds per session.

Apart from this global estimate, Nielsen NetRatings also calculates
corresponding figures for the USA and a number of other countries.
Follow this link to see the US data:

Weekly web usage data for the USA
http://pm.netratings.com/nnpm/owa/NRpublicreports.usageweekly

Monthly web usage data for the USA
http://pm.netratings.com/nnpm/owa/NRpublicreports.usagemonthly

To access the statistics for other countries, please use this link:

http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/hot_off_the_net_i.jsp

You will find the links to the data in the lower section of the
website.

Figures for the world online population are published by CyberAtlas.
They quote the media resarchers, eMarketer (estimating 445.9 million
users worldwide) and Computer Industry Almanac (estimating 533 million
users):

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,1323,5911_151151,00.html

According to data by the OCLC Office of Research, published by the
University of Lausanne, there were 8.7 million websites worldwide in
October, 2001:

http://inforge.unil.ch/francais/enseignement/DpioMemoires20002001/DaisyPremat_final.pdf

So this is the approximate general picture for online behaviour
worldwide: There are roughly 500 million Internet users. Each of them
accesses, in average, the Net 18 times a month, spending ca. 31
minutes online, during which he visits 40 websites. He stays 47
seconds on each of the sites. Nearly 9 million websites compete in
being among the 735 sites this average user visits in a month.

Sources:

Nielsen NetRatings - Hot Off The Net
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/hot_off_the_net.jsp

CyberAtlas - The Big Picture: Stats Toolbox
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/stats_toolbox/article

Université de Lausanne: Authentification processes in distributed
network systems
http://inforge.unil.ch/francais/enseignement/DpioMemoires20002001/DaisyPremat_final.pdf

Search terms used:
"number of websites worldwide" 2002:
://www.google.de/search?q=%22number+of+websites+worldwide%22+2002&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=10&sa=N

Hope, this is what you were looking for
Regards,
Scriptor

---

Clarification of Answer by scriptor-ga on 04 Oct 2002 04:52 PDT

Dear shiferaw,

A small addition: The number of 8.7 million websites refers to
commercial sites only, since the figures were estimated by eMarketer,
a media research company with focus on commercial web activities. The
total number of websites - including all no-commercial, public,
private etc. - is more than 2.5 billion.

Regards,
Scriptor