Apache Leads the Latest Netcraft Web Server Survey

Web analytics firm Netcraft has just announced the results of their May 2011 Web Server Survey and once again, Apache had the largest growth with more than 12.5 million hostnames. In the previous month’s survey, Apache had 11.4 million hostnames.

In addition, Netcraft noted that SoftLayer had the largest increase at 3 million hostnames (for April, SoftLayer had gained 2.5 million) while Earthlink had the largest decrease at 1.3 million hostnames followed by Intergenia AG with a lost of 1.1 million hostnames at server4you.net which is based in the USA. Moreover, Microsoft gained 800,000 hostnames but lost half a percentage point in market share while Google gained 1.5 million hostnames.

As for other hosting firms/platforms:

• Rackspace gained 260,000 hostnames.
• GoDaddy gained 280,000 hostnames.
• nginx gained 381,000 hostnames.
• lighttpd gained 21,000 hostnames.

The Netcraft report pointed out that the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan have not yet contributed to a significant decrease in the number of Japanese websites. Nevertheless, Netcraft also added that Japanese hostname growth was at around 231,000 hostnames – two thirds of what was seen back in March and April. It should also be noted that in April, domain registry .ME decided to waive renewal fees for one year on all Japanese domain names that expired between March 11 and April 30, 2011.

Meanwhile the report also noted that hostnames have dropped by about 95% in Libya – from 917 to 42. However, Netcraft also added that the protests sweeping North Africa and the Middle East have not yet caused any other noticeable changes in the number of hostnames for the countries in these regions.

Netcraft also pointed out that its May 2011 survey had received responses from approximately 324,697,205 sites.