Who Really Owns Your Website?
● Houston, TX hosts over 50,000 of the busiest sites in the world
○ More than twice as many as the second-place city, Mountain View, CA
15 Most Used Hosts:
1. GoDaddy
Number of sites hosted: 566,592
U.S. Alexa rank: 39
2. Bluehost
Number of sites hosted: 306,491
U.S. Alexa rank:1,568
3. Softlayer
Number of sites hosted: 281,533
U.S. Alexa rank:1,707
4. HostGator
Number of sites hosted: 225,045
U.S. Alexa rank:5,374
5. 1&1 Internet
Number of sites hosted: 197,763
U.S. Alexa rank:2,445
6. OVH
Number of sites hosted: 177,169
U.S. Alexa rank:1,970
7. Amazon Web Services
Number of sites hosted: 140,321
U.S. Alexa rank:4,564
8. Hetzner Online
Number of sites hosted: 125,461
U.S. Alexa rank: 326
9. Dreamhost
Number of sites hosted:85,307
U.S. Alexa rank: 917
10. Endurance International Group
Number of sites hosted: 84,120
U.S. Alexa rank: 951
Endurance International Group also owns webhosts such as:
● Blue Domino
● Domain.com
● Dotster
● FastDomain
● FatCow
● HostMonster
● iPage.com
● Mojo Marketplace
● iPowerWeb
● LogicBoxes
11. Rackspace Hosting
Number of sites hosted: 78,467
U.S. Alexa rank: 792
12. Google
Number of sites hosted: 69,772
U.S. Alexa rank: 28
13. CloudFlare
Number of sites hosted: 69,026
U.S. Alexa rank: 1,144
14. Liquid Web
Number of sites hosted: 60,487
U.S. Alexa rank: 146
15. Media Temple
Number of sites hosted: 55,808
U.S. Alexa rank: 26
The top 1,000 websites receive more traffic than the next 99,000 combined
The U.S. hosts almost half of the world 100,000 most popular websites (Most popular = highest Alexa rankings)
Proactive Things to Make Sure You Keep Your Website
1. Do You Own Your Domain Name?
If your designer, or host registered the domain “on your behalf”
There is a chance that they actually own the domain, not you.
Check your contract, and if you are unclear, be sure to get the domain transferred to an account in your (or your company’s name).
2. Do You Have a Contract?
If you don’t have a contract in place with your designer, that needs to be put in place. If you DO have a contract,
Check that YOU have ownership of the design and the content. If you do not have ownership of your own content, you’re in trouble.
3. Domain Name Privacy
When you register a domain, unless you use “domain name privacy” features. Whatever information you provide will be available to the public with a simple “WhoIs” search.
4. Auto Renewal
Many domains are lost due to human error. Often it’s as simple as forgetting to renew. With “Auto-Renewal” you never have to worry about that again; assuming your billing information doesn’t change.
5. A.B.S. (Always Be Scanning)
Always scan your website content for malware.
6. Use 2 Factor Authentication
If your account(s) are compromised, this will make it much less likely that they bad guys will be able to do damage.
Who Owns Your Website?
It should be you. Take steps to make sure it is.
Sources:
http://alexa.com/siteinfo
http://hostcabi.net/top_500_hosters
http://crunchbase.com
