Sometimes it"s hard to grasp how big the Internet really is. There are millions and millions of active websites out there. Now a man named Ruslan Enikeev has created a new graphical representation of the top websites on the Internet that gives a glimpse of not just how big it is but how all these sites are linked with each other.
The site is called simply The Internet Map and it generates circles based on the top 350,000 biggest websites, in terms of traffic, and puts them inside a website that can be zoomed in and out of at will. A website"s circle size is determined by its traffic; more traffic means the circle is bigger.
The map is also somewhat tied into a specific geographical region. Websites popular in the US seem to be near the center of the map"s "galaxy" while Chinese-based sites are over on the bottom left hand side of the map.
The Internet Map is also influenced by links between websites. As Enikeev explains:
To draw an analogy from classical physics, one may say that websites are electrically charged bodies, while links between them are springs. Springs pull similar websites together, and the charge does not let the bodies adjoin and pushes websites apart if there is no link between them.
The map is free to use but Enikeev has created a way to donate to its further development via PayPal.
Via: MaximumPC.com
Source: The Internet Map | Images via The Internet Map