In the April 2005 survey we received responses from 62,286,451 sites. The monthly gain of nearly 1.7 million hostnames marks the strongest growth thus far in 2005. When compared with previous years, the big gain suggests a seasonal pattern to the Internet's strongest growth. Last year's biggest month was April, with a similar gain of 1.7 million hostnames, while 2003's best showing was a 3.3million site gain in March. Those are the three largest monthly gains since the Internet economy began its recovery in 2002.

While this month's gain is notable, monthly growth of 1 million-plus hostnames is becoming routine. The survey has added at least 1 million sites in 10 of the last 18 months, compared to just three times in the previous 18-month period.

The web server market was little changed, however, with Apache picking up 0.2 percent share from Microsoft on the month.

Sun is the sum of sites running SunONE, iPlanet-Enterprise, Netscape-Enterprise, Netscape-FastTrack, Netscape-Commerce, Netscape-Communications, Netsite-Commerce & Netsite-Communications.

Microsoft is the sum of sites running Microsoft-Internet-Information-Server, Microsoft-IIS, Microsoft-IIS-W, Microsoft-PWS-95, & Microsoft-PWS.

Platform groupings are here.