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Hosting Provider Switching Analysis

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 2007 to January 2008

Hosting
Company		 Hostnames
Dec-07		 Hostnames
Jan-08		 +/-
Change		 %
Change		 New Sites From Comp Expired Sites To Comp
GoDaddy Inc 14,658,883 15,086,689 427,806 2.9% 856,866 198,896 455,702 172,254
ThePlanet 6,108,407 6,507,149 398,742 6.5% 613,211 324,960 392,152 147,277
net@ccess 833,498 1,194,991 361,493 43.4% 381,854 6,686 13,194 13,853
Rackspace 764,221 938,724 174,503 22.8% 181,347 14,382 6,358 14,868
1&1 Internet AG 9,454,014 9,616,022 162,008 1.7% 308,802 155,918 128,538 174,174
Softlayer Inc 638,662 773,777 135,115 21.2% 130,150 49,522 20,948 23,609
Superb Internet 226,140 344,481 118,341 52.3% 128,936 1,535 4,933 7,197

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

Sago Networks – Major Losses & Gains Jan 08

Top Losses
Top Losses Image

Top Gains
Top Gains Image

Detailed View
Detailed Image

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 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 182 million in October 2008], 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. Netcraft provides a view of hosting company market share within the Million busiest web sites as determined by accesses from users of the Netcraft Toolbar.

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.