In the August 2008 survey we received responses from 176,748,506 sites. This month's overall growth of 1.3 million sites reflects Apache's growth of 1.2 million and Google's gain of half a million sites, but a loss of 760 thousand sites using Microsoft IIS.

Aside from Apache's and Google's leading growth, Igor Sysoev's nginx shows the next largest gain, climbing by 170 thousand sites to a new total of 2.4 million and retaining its position as the 5th largest web server vendor.

LiteSpeed also shows strong growth this month, more than tripling the number of sites that run on this web server. Most of this growth is seen at the German company Hetzner Online, which remains the largest host of LiteSpeed sites. LiteSpeed is now used by 160 thousand sites around the world, which has taken it up to be the 16th most popular web server.

Verio is the most reliable hosting company site for July 2008, closely followed by Tiscali.

Verio offers a complete collection of web hosting services, including domain registration, web design, marketing, shared hosting, dedicated servers and virtual and managed private servers. Prior to being sold to NTT in 2000, Verio's initial growth was achieved by raising funds to purchase more than 45 ISPs, web hosting companies and e-commerce companies from around the world. Verio continues to operate as an NTT Communications company.

Tiscali appears in second place this month and continues to operate its main site from Apache running on a Linux operating system. Tiscali is a European telecommunications company based in Italy and markets its offerings predominantly in Italy, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Their core business is providing internet access, with two million ADSL subscribers in the UK and Italy. Tiscali had the most reliable hosting company site in February this year.

Six of July's top ten hosting companies run Linux on their main sites, including Verio and Tiscali. New York Internet uses FreeBSD, while Go Daddy uses Windows Server 2003.

The Netcraft Toolbar is available for the Firefox 3 web browser. The Netcraft Toolbar offers protection against phishing by using Netcraft's phishing database to block known phishing sites and provides a convenient mechanism for reporting newly discovered phishing sites.

Download the Netcraft Toolbar

In addition to blocking known phishing sites, the Netcraft Toolbar also displays a Risk Rating for all new sites it encounters. The Risk Rating — a user-friendly visual summary of the information displayed by the toolbar — evaluates new sites against characteristics of the phishing sites reported to date. Sites which are deemed safe will show a low Risk Rating, while riskier sites will show higher ratings based on a number of factors. To make it easier to judge whether you wish to continue browsing a site, the toolbar also shows which country and netblock the site is hosted in, and when the site was first seen.

Knowing which country a site is hosted in can help you spot risky content and highlight DNS poisoning attempts – if your US online banking site suddenly appears to be hosted in Russia, that would give good cause to be suspicious.

Some countries attract a large number of phishing incidents, often due to lax security or the increased likelihood of phishing sites staying around for longer. One particularly notable example is Cameroon, where the number of phishing attacks has exceeded the total number of sites hosted in that country. Netcraft publishes statistics on the phishiest countries in the world. You can also see how popular a site is with Netcraft's site rank.

A detailed site report shows further information about each site, including the web server's uptime:

Win an iPod

Netcraft gives away iPods to the top five reporters of validated phishing sites. A leaderboard tracks the top reporters for each monthly competition.

When you visit a page that you believe to be a phishing site, reporting it to Netcraft will allow other toolbar users to benefit from your vigilance. After you report a URL, Netcraft will review the report and block the page if it is confirmed to be part of a phishing incident.

The prizes can be won by any individual who reports phishing URLs via the web form, or directly through the Netcraft Toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer.

In the July 2008 survey we received responses from 175,480,931 sites. The web has grown by 3.14 million sites over the past month, with Apache web servers increasing by 2.2 million and Microsoft IIS by 1.4 million.

Particularly strong growth is seen in lighttpd, which nearly doubles its total this month, rising from 1.5 million to 2.9 million and increasing its market share to 1.68%. lighttpd has overtaken nginx and Oversee to become the 4th most popular web server in the world. Users of lighttpd include YouTube, Wikipedia and the IM service meebo.

Much of this month's Apache growth was seen at ThePlanet.com, which gained 1.9 million further sites running on Apache. More than 95% of the sites hosted by ThePlanet.com now use Apache. Earlier this month, ThePlanet.com launched an enterprise-class managed hosting service under the branding of Planet Northstar, alongside dedicated servers under their new Planet Alpha branding.

Aplus.Net is the most reliable hosting company site for June 2008, following its second place ranking last month.

Aplus.Net is a division of Abacus America, Inc., and has been offering internet services for more than 10 years. APlus.Net offers dedicated servers, web hosting, web design, marketing and is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar. The company has more than 200,000 customers and more than 6,000 dedicated server customers.

Datasync takes second place this month. Datasync is a division of I-55 Internet Services, which has since been acquired by Xfone. Xfone offers broadband services to residential and business users, and shared hosting through its Pixelstix division.

Five of June's top ten hosting companies run Linux on their main sites. Three of the others use FreeBSD and the remaining two use Windows Server 2003.