In the March 2006 survey we received responses from 77,568,868 sites, an increase of 1.38 million from February 2006. This month's hostname growth has a somewhat speculative flavor, as the survey found nearly 2.8 million new hostnames this month, but just 237K new active sites. That ratio of one active site for every 12 hostnames is much lower than in recent months (in September 2005 the ratio was one in five).

That means a larger percentage of new domains are being parked, rather than used on active web sites. The trend is likely connected to media coverage of domain investing, which appears to have prompted a surge in speculative buying. That means more domains are being bought for resale or ad revenue, rather than for use with web sites.

Infrastructure changes at huge hosting providers once again influence web server market share. Apache gains 1.5 million hostnames this month, including more than 950K at Go Daddy which had been reclassified in January to "Unknown" due to changes in the front-end system used in Go Daddy's bulk hosting service. That shift helps Apache regain 0.7 percent market share, with other servers showing little change this month.

In the February 2006 survey we received responses from 76,184,000 sites, an increase of 933K from January's total. This month's survey finds different trends emerging in hostnames and active sites. Apache continues its strong growth with an increase of 1.3 million hostnames for the month, adding nearly a full point to its commanding market share lead. The active sites data shows a very different result, with Windows servers gaining 185K active sites, while Apache adds just 14K.

The split reflects increased volatility in the Web Server Survey in recent months following a lengthy period of market share stability. Factors include continuing site shifts at registrars and large domain "parking" operations. In recent months both Apache and Microsoft have seen sudden dips in hostname market share as huge blocks of bulk-registered domains expired at Zipa (December) and enom (November). This month there was a drop of 269K sites on Apache at Dotster as a clock of bulk-registered domains expired, which was offset by a surge in new domain registrations, which included 1.4 million new sites on Apache.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has made gains in hosting in Germany and Japan, two markets which traditionally have been dominated by Linux. Windows servers have gained substantial numbers of active sites at German host Intergenia and Excite Japan.

In the January 2006 survey we received responses from 75,251,256 sites, an increase of 897K sites from December 2005. With the gain, the Internet resumes its pattern of steady growth, which was interrupted last month with a decrease of 219K hostnames, which was the first decline in the survey nearly three years. The loss was the result of the expiration of 1 million .name domains at Zipa.

This month's analysis shows how changes at a single large provider can influence survey trends. The market share for the Apache web server is down by nearly three percent this month, due primarily to configuration changes at domain registrar Go Daddy. Its bulk hosting service includes a front-end system that generates an HTTP redirect when a site is first accessed — and this redirect is not served by (or, at least, does not identify itself as) Apache. Once the redirect is followed, or if the site is accessed a second time, it is then served by Apache. So this change (which, given the large number of sites hosted by Go Daddy, has not gone unnoticed), has caused a large swing from Apache to Unknown.