In the August 2008 survey we received responses from 176,748,506 sites. This month's overall growth of 1.3 million sites reflects Apache's growth of 1.2 million and Google's gain of half a million sites, but a loss of 760 thousand sites using Microsoft IIS.

Aside from Apache's and Google's leading growth, Igor Sysoev's nginx shows the next largest gain, climbing by 170 thousand sites to a new total of 2.4 million and retaining its position as the 5th largest web server vendor.

LiteSpeed also shows strong growth this month, more than tripling the number of sites that run on this web server. Most of this growth is seen at the German company Hetzner Online, which remains the largest host of LiteSpeed sites. LiteSpeed is now used by 160 thousand sites around the world, which has taken it up to be the 16th most popular web server.

Verio is the most reliable hosting company site for July 2008, closely followed by Tiscali.

Verio offers a complete collection of web hosting services, including domain registration, web design, marketing, shared hosting, dedicated servers and virtual and managed private servers. Prior to being sold to NTT in 2000, Verio's initial growth was achieved by raising funds to purchase more than 45 ISPs, web hosting companies and e-commerce companies from around the world. Verio continues to operate as an NTT Communications company.

Tiscali appears in second place this month and continues to operate its main site from Apache running on a Linux operating system. Tiscali is a European telecommunications company based in Italy and markets its offerings predominantly in Italy, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Their core business is providing internet access, with two million ADSL subscribers in the UK and Italy. Tiscali had the most reliable hosting company site in February this year.

Six of July's top ten hosting companies run Linux on their main sites, including Verio and Tiscali. New York Internet uses FreeBSD, while Go Daddy uses Windows Server 2003.