Yes, you (but definitely not everyone) can build a blog or a basic static website these days with free web-based templates and/or somewhat intuitive software (if you are web savvy). But if you’re not a well-known and established brand, have strong marketing skills, are selling something at a real bargain that people want, have created that one-in-a-million better mousetrap, or are extremely lucky, forget about attracting more than your immediate family and close friends (on occasion) to your blog or website.

It was also noted on the Netcraft website that it had clients in the UK, U.S., Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America, and many of them were big-name companies such as American Express, Deloitte & Touche, Paypal, Macromedia, Microsoft and others. In 1999, Deloitte & Touche ranked Netcraft as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK. Plus, Bob Metcalfe, who was noted on the Netcraft site as the "inventor of Ethernet," had once called the Netcraft website "cool;" and Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly media, called the Netcraft website "the best known example of a site devoted to tracking technology on the Internet." (I thought the "cool" notation was odd as well.) Conspicuously missing from all this self-promotional content was information about who ran the company. I’m not saying that Netcraft is not all the things that it says about itself. I’m only saying that if they would have told me who they are, I would have been more inclined to believe them.

The next step was to go to Network Solutions’ WHOIS online database where anyone can discover who registered just about any domain name. Turns out Netcraft.com’s administrative contact was Mike Prettejohn, and it listed his e-mail address. Plus, through a Google search, an old press release dating back to February 2001 quoted Prettejohn as Netcraft’s president. That was good enough for me to shoot off an e-mail to him in which I introduced myself and explained that I am writing this book and would like to interview him by telephone in order get a clearer idea about his company and how he comes up with these figures.

As an education journalist I do this kind of inquiry all the time. I simply send out an e-mail query to a prospective interviewee with the subject line of "would like to interview you." Roughly speaking, about 85 percent of the time I get an affirmative response and a telephone interview is ultimately conducted in a timely fashion. These interviews are basically the lifeblood of the work I do, and 99 percent of the time they are friendly, informative and thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve made numerous contacts (more than 700 over the past five years) and friends through telephone interviews that started with a simple e-mail query.

So, I was disappointed when I received a very polite thanks-but- no-thanks e-mail response from Mr. Prettejohn, declining an interview.

I have yet to find any solid evidence about the total number of websites on the Internet. There are, however, lots of interesting and divergent statistics from numerous companies that study what websites get the most hits and visitors, what keywords are put into search engines, and much more. These constantly moving statistics are explained in more depth in subsequent chapters of this book. In the meantime, a solid method, borrowed from the schools of journalism, for deciding whether any website is authoritative and trustworthy is provided below.

The question of authority asks if the people providing information online are recognized experts. In other words, can their views can be considered valid, at least from the standpoint of their station in life, i.e. are they professionals in their respective field?