Internet research firm Netcraft has reported that the total number of websites on the internet has passed the 100 million mark.

The firm's November 2006 Web Server Survey said that 3.5 million new sites emerged in the past month, pushing the total to 101,435,253. However, the number of currently active sites is only around 51 million.

Much of the growth is attributed to new blogs and small business sites, according to Netcraft. The company pointed to blog hosting services from Microsoft and Google as fuelling the recent growth.

The internet has effectively doubled in size in a little over two years, after the 50 million mark was reached in April 2004.

The internet appears to be growing exponentially, gaining 20 million new sites in the past seven months alone.

It was not until September 2000, five years after Netcraft's first report, that the internet first reached 20 million sites.