Survey Shows Continued Growth for Web in 3Q08

The September 2008 Netcraft survey showed continued growth and major shuffling among the Top 5 players. The research firm received responses from 181,277,835 sites, an increase of more than 8.9 million from the June 2008 survey, which yielded 172,338,726 responses.

The number of sites measured this quarter once again surpassed the 100 million mark set in November 2006 and set yet another record.

Not much changed during this period. The top players remained the same. Google Front End (GFE), lighttpd, nginx, Apache and Microsoft IIS the top spots. Oversee dipped out of the top-five, and Sun-ONE-Web-Server and Zeus dipped still further.

Apache's market share increased marginally, essentially remaining flat. In terms of actual growth, it added almost 4.6 million servers. The Web server continued to hang on to more than half of the market, this time picking up almost 50.4 percent at the end of the quarter, a bit more than it had at the end of second quarter. Microsoft, meanwhile, decreased its share nearly 2 percent, ending the quarter with 38,609 fewer servers.

The complete survey results can be found, here.