More, How Much VRML is Out There

Dateline: 2/3/99

About six months ago I ran a little count of different types of media on several sites. It's time for a checkup and some new numbers.

Four sites were visited. The two sites, Geocities and Tripod offer free web pages. In addition I went to two major web searching engines, AltaVista and HotBot. All of the searches were simply for the words VRML, Java, Shockwave, and QuickTimeVR, RealAudio, and QuickTime. Following are the counts taken on 2/1/99:

Search Results - Number of Hits 2/1/99
VRML Java Shockwave QuickTimeVR RealAudio QuickTime
Geocities 18161 168248 18020 104 36366 9293
Tripod 4405 74992 7888 29 10002 5405
Alta Vista 730652 5,371,809 579756 4849 876126 689464
HotBot 172260 1,437,860 85,350 1,610 205,640 141,040

Well looking at the two set of numbers it does appear that VRML is growing on the free Web page sites. Clearly the Web is growing even more! I'm not sure what else to surmise from the number but it sure is interesting.

Search Results - Number of Hits 5/29/98
VRML Java Shockwave QuickTimeVR RealAudio QuickTime
Geocities 1709 24539 1945 13 4077 1569
Tripod 178 2908 355 0 420 227
Alta Vista 984070 6106230 595690 5527 788860 658030
HotBot 199318 2159859 130359 2827 216851 154100

Keep in mind that the hits are not for the presence of the actual media type, but for the word. If a page contains the word "VRML" anywhere than it's counted. However it seems reasonable to assume that the more widespread a media type the more hits it gets. Clearly this is quite unscientific...but ain't it fun!

One Year Ago in Focus on Web3D VRML98 It's the REAL Deal


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