• by October 20, 2000

(AP) -- The World Wide Web continues to grow but may be growing more slowly these days, one study finds.

The Web Characterization Project found 7.1 million Web sites in a June snapshot, a 53 percent increase from 4.7 million a year earlier. The growth from 1998 to 1999 was 77 percent.

But that doesn't mean the Internet is in decline.

With the Internet larger, it takes many more new sites to sustain a rapid growth rate.

"It was bound to start to slow down," said Ed O'Neill, the study's project manager. "A lot of sites are also growing rapidly in size as well, so it's a misinterpretation to say growth is slow."

The study was conducted by the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit research group for North American libraries.

There are roughly 4 billion combinations of Internet Protocol addresses, the numeric locators behind domain names. The study's authors checked 4 million of them for the presence of a publicly accessible Web site. Then they eliminated duplicates - different names that route visitors to the same site.

The study does not capture the extent of personal Web pages because those are often part of a larger site such as America Online or Yahoo's GeoCities.

Nor does the study measure the amount of content at each site. That is the study's main flaw, said Mike Bergman, whose BrightPlanet company estimates there are now about 550 billion documents stored on the Web.

Measuring the Web using IP addresses, Bergman said, is like determining a town's population by the number of street addresses, a method that equates single-family homes with apartment complexes.

He said the Internet is still growing rapidly because individual sites are making even more information available.

"The Internet is becoming the universal medium," Bergman said. "That trend is just starting. From a content standpoint, the growth trend is unbelievable."

Web Characterization Project: http://wcp.oclc.org