China reports 2.4 billion webpages

China reports a total of 694,000 websites, over 20% being individual's. The number of domain names surged 40 percent to reach 2,592,000, according to the report on China's Internet information and resources 2005 published by the State Council Informatization Office on Tuesday,

The webpage number soared 269% to reach 2.4 billion in 2005. Each website has 3,748 pages on average. 18.6% of websites locate in Beijing, 16.6% in Guangdong, and 9.7% in Zhejiang.

Company websites account for 60.4% of the total number; then comes individual's website, which account for 21.9%; educational and scientific research websites account for 5.1 %.

There are about 150,000 individual's websites in China, which mainly offer BBS (43.5%), download of music, novels and images (35.7%), and academic discussion (24.9%) and online transaction (11.9%).

44.2% of people build their websites "out of interest and with the attempt to do something they like"; 31.4% do it to "communicate with the world outside, and offer their references for others"; 16.2% take the websites as "foundation for their business" and 6.1% for "needs of work".

Not all websites enjoy high page views. Daily page view averages below 50 in 39.6% of websites. The rate is as high as 51.5% for company's websites, indicating the websites are not functioning very well.

Updating deserves webmasters' attention too. Only 17.62% of websites are updated within one week. By contrast, 18.58% are updated once over six months.

Most websites are run by teams with less than ten people.

By People's Daily Online