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The US hosts 43% of the world’s top 1 million websites

us flag

It should come as no surprise that the United States is the world leader in hosting websites. But just how many of the world’s top sites are hosted in the US? Following our study of web hosting in Africa, we now broaden the perspective and can announce that 43% of the world’s top 1 million websites are hosted in the United States.

Top 20 web hosting countries

After checking the IP addresses of the top 1 million websites as ranked by Alexa, we put them in order of how many websites are hosted in each country. You can read a bit more about our methodology at the end of the article.

In total, we identified 191 countries as hosting one or more sites in the top 1 million, with the following 20 in the top:

Top 20 web hosting countries

As you can see, the US is in a clear lead with 431,214 sites, followed by Germany with 82,152, China with 49,730, UK with 37,829, and France with 35,777. In 20th place we find South Korea with 5,659 websites hosted out of the top 1 million.

This is certainly a long tail if there ever was one 🙂

Europe vs US

With the US in such a commanding lead, it would, of course, be interesting to see how it compares to other parts of the world. One of the obvious comparisons would be with Europe. Here’s what that comparison looks like:

Web hosting: Europe vs US

Even compared to the countries in Europe combined, the US is still considerably larger, with 431,214 sites compared to the 313,252 in Europe.

You may have noted that Europe and the US together claim around 75% of the top 1 million sites.

Top 100 countries

Here are the top 100 countries, which host the most sites in the top 1 million:

Top 100 web hosting countries
Country Number of sites hosted
1 United States 431,214
2 Germany 82,152
3 China 49,730
4 United Kingdom 37,829
5 France 35,777
6 Japan 35,138
7 Russia 31,134
8 Netherlands 24,214
9 Canada 18,218
10 Italy 13,293
11 Spain 13,047
12 Brazil 10,481
13 Poland 9,989
14 Turkey 7,721
15 Australia 6,669
16 Ukraine 6,537
17 Czech Republic 6,257
18 India 6,255
19 Hong Kong 5,730
20 Korea (South) 5,659
21 Sweden 5,243
22 Singapore 4,276
23 Thailand 4,190
24 Ireland 4,122
25 Denmark 4,037
26 Switzerland 4,022
27 Romania 3,746
28 Viet Nam 3,434
29 Hungary 3,135
30 Indonesia 3,002
31 Taiwan 2,741
32 Iran 2,704
33 Austria 2,442
34 Argentina 2,312
35 Malaysia 2,289
36 British Virgin Islands 2,245
37 Belgium 2,064
38 Norway 1,887
39 South Africa 1,852
40 Israel 1,729
41 Portugal 1,724
42 Bulgaria 1,713
43 Finland 1,707
44 Pakistan 1,421
45 Bahamas 1,385
46 Lithuania 1,214
47 Slovakia 1,208
48 New Zealand 1,046
49 Mexico 1,038
50 Chile 867
51 Latvia 857
52 Slovenia 790
53 Belarus 754
54 Greece 712
55 Kazakhstan 688
56 Estonia 635
57 Luxembourg 591
58 Croatia 491
59 Columbia 412
60 Panama 379
61 Serbia 365
62 Philippines 325
63 Saudi Arabia 322
64 Venezuela 316
65 Cyprus 313
66 Peru 311
67 United Arab Emirates 279
68 Azerbaijan 277
69 Egypt 276
70 Moldova 235
71 Georgia 223
72 Uzbekistan 213
73 Costa Rica 196
74 Mongolia 191
75 Iceland 188
76 Mauritius 180
77 Ecuador 129
78 Sri Lanka 119
79 Cayman Island 107
80 Bangladesh 105
81 Macedonia 103
82 Morocco 97
83 Curacao 96
84 Uruguay 95
85 Bosnia and Herzegovina 92
86 Kuwait 92
87 Armenia 88
88 Dominican Republic 88
89 Kyrgyzstan 79
90 Seychelles 56
91 Kenya 54
92 Qatar 54
93 Jordan 52
94 Liechtenstein 52
95 Bolivia 51
96 San Marino 51
97 Puerto Rico 50
98 Nigeria 49
99 Syria 49
100 Belize 48

Will the rest catch up to the US?

Alexa may not be the definitive list to go by, but, at the very least, it should give a good indication of what the real numbers are. We doubt anyone is surprised that the US is in the lead, but it’s interesting to see how the countries seem to jockey for positions. Also, we just looked at the top 1 million sites, which is just a small fraction of all websites that exist.

We will keep an eye on this issue and see how it develops over the coming months and years.

Do you think that, over time, the US will lose some of its importance in terms of web hosting and we’ll see more top sites hosted outside the US? Let us know in the comments below.

About the data: The data was collected June 6-8, 2012, with a Pingdom-developed script that successfully scanned 945,472 out of Alexa’s top 1 million sites. The remaining sites failed for various reasons. We should point out that web hosting is a constantly moving target, so where a particular site is hosted may have changed by the time you read this.

Image (top) via Shutterstock.

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