Hosting Provider Switching Analysis Available

Netcraft has developed a technique to identify movements of sites from one hosting provider to another on a monthly basis. Netcraft compares the hosting location of each site found by the Web Server Survey as indicated by the DNS with the equivalent information for the same site in the previous month.

Many sites’ location will be unchanged, but some will have moved from one hosting provider to another during the course of the month. Additionally, hosting companies may gain new sites that were not previously found by the survey, and lose expired sites which are no longer present in the Internet’s DNS.

Analysing this information in the aggregate presents a unique bird’s eye view of the hosting industry, identifying winners who are able to take sites from other hosting companies, and persuade people developing new sites to host those sites with them.

Excerpts from December 2002 to January 2003

Using the dataset, a hosting company can see both where their new business came from, and the providers to whom it has lost business. It can also see the site switching information for any of the top 1000 hosting providers on the Internet.

Server Beach - Major Losses and Gains May 03

Losses

Gains

Detailed

Data Trends and Themes

• Pure domain registrars are natural losers of sites, as parked sites will eventually either be deployed or allowed to lapse. However, it is possible for a domain registrar to gain sites from other domain parking systems as domain owners may choose to switch registrar when renewing their domain. One of the largest gainers presently is GoDaddy, as people renew parked domains at a cheaper registrar.
• The United States is a net loser of sites to most other developed countries. By and large the US had led the world in the development of hosting services. However, as the technical quality of hosting services available in other countries catches up, other attributes of the service, including the availability of support in the local language, and better response times for local users, have become important considerations for web site owners.
• The most likely explanation for a large and unexpected move is a single large shared hosting system moving from one infrastructure provider to another.
• Users can drill in on these to obtain a more detailed view of the moves based on DNS as shown.

Limitations

• Only sites found by the Web Server Survey will be included. The number of hosts found worldwide running internet web sites by the Web Server Survey is large [over 40 million in April 2003], but is not exhaustive.
• Attributing a site to a hosting location requires successful DNS lookup on a site’s ip address. If a DNS lookup fails then the hosting location will be unknown to us.
• All sites are considered equal in this analysis – the Netcraft web site provides a dynamic view of switching amongst the 100,000 most popular sites queried on the Netcraft “What’s that site running?” page.

More Information

The dataset is updated on a monthly basis and is available on a company license basis.

Please contact us (sales@netcraft.com) for further information of costs.