The number of websites in existence is very difficult to judge, thousands are created every day and thousands others are closed down.

The number is generally on the rise, and has been since the Internet was invented, the only time that the number of websites has decreased was during the financial crisis in 2008-2009, it’s now on the increase again and doing so at an unprecedented rate.

The slow down in 2008-2009 was a result of the global financial crisis which saw many business and organizations go bankrupt, and many hobbyists and bloggers shut down their sites due to lack of funds.

As of September 2011 there were approximately 485 million websites in existence, and this can be expected to keep rising.

In fact, there were 22 million new host names registered last month alone.

For a monthly update on how many websites there are, click here.