{"id":17165,"date":"2026-10-16T15:33:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T15:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/?p=17165"},"modified":"2026-10-16T15:35:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T15:35:27","slug":"woodcentral-28-years-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/woodcentral-28-years-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"WoodCentral: 28 years and counting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can we determine a reasonable estimate of how many domains have been in continuous operation for over 20 years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, but only as an estimate. The important distinction is between a domain name that has been registered for more than 20 years and a website that has remained in continuous operation for more than 20 years. The latter is a much smaller group, and there is no comprehensive public census of such websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of October 2026, we&#8217;re looking for websites that were already operating before October 2006 and have continued operating ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the available data tells us<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The internet had approximately 386.9 million registered domain names at the end of 2025, according to VeriSign&#8217;s Domain Name Industry Brief. This includes domains that host no functioning website.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Research presented at the 2024 iPRES digital-preservation conference examined 27.3 million archived URLs. Only 35% remained active in 2023, illustrating how much web content disappears. Nearly half of the URLs first archived in 1996\u20132000 were still active in 2023. These are URL-level findings, however, not a count of continuously operating domains.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neither source directly tells us how many websites have survived continuously for 20 years. We need to estimate that separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My estimate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the entire internet, I would use the following rough estimates, rather than claim an exact count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><th>Definition<\/th><th>Estimated number worldwide<\/th><\/tr><tr><td>Domains registered 20+ years ago, regardless of whether they host a working website<\/td><td>Millions to tens of millions<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Domains hosting websites that are active today and have a 20-year history<\/td><td>Perhaps 2\u20135 million<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Websites demonstrably operating continuously under the same domain, with no meaningful interruption<\/td><td>Unknown; likely fewer<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 2\u20135 million figure is a reasoned working estimate, not a published statistic. It extrapolates from research on the survival of website root URLs and the historical size of the domain-name market. The available studies do not establish a reliable global count of continuously operating websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is also an important qualification: a website can survive for 20 years while changing owners, hosting companies, software and content. If you&#8217;re counting sites that have remained available to visitors throughout that period, rather than sites that merely retain an old domain registration, the definition matters considerably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For WoodCentral&#8217;s preservation initiative, I would describe these sites as a small but significant part of the web&#8217;s accumulated knowledge, without publishing a numerical claim until better data is available. A domain-age search combined with <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20260000000000*\/woodcentral.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Internet Archive history checks<\/a> could produce a more defensible estimate for a particular category, such as independent hobbyist and enthusiast websites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can we determine a reasonable estimate of how many domains have been in continuous operation for over 20 years? Yes, but only as an estimate. The important distinction is between a domain name that has been registered for more than 20 years and a website that has remained in continuous operation for more than 20 &#8230; <a title=\"WoodCentral: 28 years and counting\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/woodcentral-28-years-and-counting\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about WoodCentral: 28 years and counting\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}