Google, Microsoft Report Hostname Gains in June 2010

Two of the five major web servers gained hostnames in the last month, according to the June 2010 Web Server Survey from Web analytics provider Netcraft.

According to a Wednesday blog post, which summarized the results of a monthly survey of more than 200 million sites, Google recorded the largest hostname gains including 3 million due to increased activity from users of its blog hosting service, Blogger.

Microsoft gained 1.8 million new hostnames, however, the increase was not the result of a single increase, but rather a significant growth at Microsoft Corp, GoDaddy Inc and VPLS Inc.

The largest overall loser of hostnames was nginx, which served 2.2 million fewer hostnames than last month. A majority of the losses, 1.6 million, came as a result of drops in China at China Telecom, China Unicom and the Data Communications Bureau of Tianjin Province, and as stale blogs at sohu.com, blogbus.com and hexun.com expired from the survey.

Apache, while still holding a 54-percent majority of hostnames, served 871 thousand fewer hostnames worldwide, which, Netcraft notes, actually masks much larger changes between in individual countries. Apache served 2 million more hostnames in the UK this month as a result of colossal growth at Real International Business Co, however, Apache lost 3 million hostnames in the US at ThePlanet.com.

This month shows a decidedly different landscape from last month when four of the five major web servers gained hostnames. In the May survey, Microsoft gained 780,000 more hostnames, but lost 235,000 active sites. Google saw a drop of 1.4 million hostnames, mostly due to expired sites in the server's blogging system, which was due to a significant loss of blogging sites.