Google finds the web has over 1 trillion unique URLs

July 25, 2008 | MG Siegler | Comments | |

1,000,000,000,000. That’s how many URLs Google has found on the web. Obviously, that’s a huge number and it’s even more impressive considering that it is only unique URLs — to get to the number, Google removed all pages that have multiple URLs with the same content.

Other things of note from Google’s post on the matter:

  • Several billion new individual web pages are popping up in its index each day
  • The first Google index was in 1998 and it counted 26 million web pages
  • By 2000 the Google index hit the one billion mark

One trillion isn’t even the total number of web pages out there, it’s only the one Google has found — and not even Google can count them all. At least not yet. As it notes, there are technically an infinite amount of web pages when you take into account things like online calendars whicha allow you to go forward and back in time as needed, creating a new page each time.

Perhaps most mind boggling is this remark from Google:

This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

[photo: flickr/fabooj]

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About the Author, MG Siegler

MG Siegler writes about technology trends and new media for VentureBeat, with a focus on mobile topics, social elements and key news stories. Before that, MG wrote about technology on his blog, ParisLemon. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan where he studied film. He's previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he did web development. He now lives in San Francisco.

  • jimmygle
    Please excuse me while I partake in the role of grammar police... "Several billion new individual web pages are popping up in it’s index each day"
  • thx jim, fixed.
  • Just trillion?? Tell me when they find google of them :)
  • Just wait until 2108 or so...
  • Is that a calculated time frame or a wild guess??
  • Shouldn't that be a googol?
  • yea it should be googol, my bad!
  • POP!
  • edhardy622
    British law student sues Abercrombie-Fitch for disability discrimination.
    http://www.abercrombieonsale.co.uk