A failing industry? The death and decline of the web site hosting industry |
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I was reading through my favorite web hosting forum, webhostingtalk.com, where I came across a thread about this new feature Google has for measuring the popularity of a search term over the past 4 years. It’s called Google trends and can be found at Google.com/trends. Anyway, I was curious to the search volume of the simple term ‘web hosting’ on Google Trends. According to that graph, search volume for that term has decreased by more than half. What does this mean?
Is it possible that web hosting is no longer needed because of all the free and easy services like youtube.com and myspace.com? Back in the day, if a user wanted to put ANYTHING up on the web he/she would have to find a web hosting provider to do this. Today, all you have to do is signup for a free Youtube account and you can start uploading any video you want to. If you want a web page, all you need to do is signup at MySpace and you’ve got yourself a personalized web page in little to no time…and completely free. Sites like Myspace and Youtube have made it so extremely easy for the average user to get their thoughts and ideas out there that the demand for professional web hosting has almost vanished.
Perhaps a change in keywords? After seeing that graph, I thought to myself that maybe people were just searching with a different term instead of web hosting. I checked all the long tail versions of web hosting and all of them have about the same result as our first term. Decline, decline, decline. Terms that used to be popular back in 2000-2004 don’t even have enough search volume for GoogleTrends to rank them.
I do think that there is still a need for professional web hosting – for instance if you want to make any money off your work, you definitely would want to go with a professional hosting service. However the majority of web users out there are just fine with the free, popular alternatives like Youtube and MySpace.
Jun 19th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
True, with this trends in the industry now, I think web hosting will suffer. But there are also a lot of advantages in owning your own website. So maybe it is just fair and square… Let’s just see where the trend will take us…
Jul 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I’ve been watching the same graph lately.
There is something missing here. The internet is growing every day and new websites go online. You cannot host an ecommerce site on myspace. So why is the decline in search terms like dedicated servers and business hosting?
Jul 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Maybe this doesn’t have much to do with the free hosting services that you mentioned. There were always free web hosts although most required more technical ability than sites like MySpace or YouTube.
I think it’s more of a solidifying of the web as a necessity for any company. A higher number of people have websites and no longer need to search for hosting. Perhaps when they need a new site, they stay w/ their current host.
It does seem, however, that there are a small number of hosts that a large percentage of the website owning population use. This may be why it’s a difficult time for the smaller hosting companies.
Aug 24th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I agree with Ryan on this one, i believe it has something to do with customers staying with there current providers. Just think about it for a moment. Over the years you stated 2000 – 2004 some of the largest and the largest hosting companies came out of the wood work, for instance, ENOM, GODADDY and IPOWER. So if you think that Godaddy has about 23% of the web hosting market then it would make total sense. Hosting companies are becoming house hold names, that is why it is important for hosting companies to monetize there offerings and marketing prowess. It no longer is enough for a company to just be listed on the search engine, you need to lure clients in, in other places.
Aug 25th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Good comments guys. Even though a lot of your sites are competitive to mine, I have no problem giving out the text links for comments like these!
Sep 13th, 2008 at 11:37 am
i dont think myspace or youtube can be long term alternatives to web hosting. they are quite good for media uploading. but what would u do with ur copyrighted materials! i dont think u would just upload there without ur own copyright & let people violate ur material as they wish.
as u said if u want to make money & want to own something in internet u would like to hav ur own space rather than depending on others.
Dec 13th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I don’t see it as the end, sites like MySpace, Youtube, Piczo, whatever, are for personal use! Can you see any ‘bigger’ sites using them?
Feb 26th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
I’m surprised to hear that the demand for web hosting has gone down. I mean free hosted blogs and other services have been around for so many years I’m not so sure if thats the reason. Perhaps todays generation anyone who wanted to get their own webhost is more likely to have done so already years ago. And also maybe todays generation is less entreprenuer and educated so less likely to want to learn how to host their own website.