Internet Passes 600k SSL Sites

May 16, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web analytics firm Netcraft (netcraft.com) announced on Tuesday that its SSL Survey has found more than 600,000 SSL sites on the Internet for the first time since its 10 years of running.

The first survey in November 1996 found 3,283 sites and since then the number of SSL sites has had an average compound growth of approximately 65 percent per annum, says Netcraft. The organization says the survey is a good guide to the growth of online trading and service and counts sites by collecting SSL certificates.

New developments with SSL have been seen this year with Microsoft's launch of extended validation certificates in Internet Explorer. Netcraft says this has the first major change in the way SSL has been presented to the user where instead of padlock icons to show a secure site, EV certificated sites are identified by a green background in the URL box in Internet Explorer. This is intended to provide banks and retailers with a clearer way of showing users that they are on the genuine Web site. However, there has been slow adoption of EV certificates with its total usage passing 0.1 percent of the survey for the first time last month, says Netcraft.

Netcraft also recently announced that DataPipe, NaviSite, MyHosting.com and iWeb8 were the Web hosting companies with the most reliable Web sites for March 2007.