How Many Articles are Published Every Day

The internet is more extensive than any of us can comprehend, and a large part of that is just how many people are writing and creating content for the internet. It could take the form of videos, photos, audio files, podcasts, or something else. Yet the online article is one of the oldest forms of content, if only because text is easy to transmit online and produce. It might look more like academic information (the internet was primarily used for educational purposes at first, after all), or it might be used for personal blogs and sharing recipes, but it is all interesting to someone.

And to breach the question early, there are millions of articles you could be reading now, including this one! There might be billions, depending on what you count (more on this later). There is so much content and articles online that you could hardly hope to read them all. This begs the question of how much content is being created and how many articles are published every day. It is not an easy question to answer and may not have an exact answer, but we choose to investigate regardless.

Here is what information we could find and a greater breakdown of both the question and the answer:

Putting the Issue Into Perspective

Think about some of the websites you visit every day. Or at least think of the news outlets. What are the articles you read on them? How many do you read every day? How many do you skip over? On most venues, chances are you don’t know everything that gets published. Even on your favorite sites, you are unlikely to read everything that comes out unless there are only one or two authors, and articles come out weekly.

Yet those articles exist, people are constantly writing them, and more information is being shared and created. How can we quantify that? On top of that, people are working around the clock to create content for millions of sites you’ve never even heard of, much less use. These sites can be and are in every language currently used today.

If you think about this, there are many articles, and knowing what’s online becomes a more important question.

How Many Articles – Statistics and Notes

The exact answer to the question of how many articles are published every day has several answers, and they don’t all agree. Part of it might depend on the source you use. There might be sources that count different articles and count articles differently, as we will discuss later. Additionally, much of the information available on the number of articles currently coming out is not as up-to-date as we’d like. However, we can still learn a lot from the available information.

Here are some stats to help answer the question and provide more context.

• According to Chartbeat, about 92,000 articles are posted to the web every day, and those are just the ones they could count. Additionally, that data was from some time ago, meaning there could very well be more getting published as there are more people online than ever before.
• And people do read and look at these articles. The count for engaged minutes on these articles is nearly 1.2 billion every day (on average). Some might be more popular than others, but the online article is alive and well.
• Overall, there are nearly two billion websites. Not all of these are active, and many don’t have anything you would consider an article, but many do. Many websites you use likely have a blog or a page where they might post informational articles on their area of expertise. Some of these might be more for SEO purposes, and others might be to provide further information about their products or services. Nonetheless, they are articles.
• Overall, the number of articles will also change rapidly up and down over time. Millions of websites go down every year, including all of the articles and posts on those sites. Combining this with the fact that many articles are getting updated or changed daily, the number can appear rather turbulent. You could get lost trying to follow the numbers, which is why averages are key here. 
• And if you look at blog posts, which you may or may not count, you’ll find more statistics on the topic. In just Q1 of 2022, there were more than 70 million WordPress blog posts alone. And that’s only one major site (there are plenty more, though there aren’t readily available numbers with those).
• The average amount of time a reader will spend on a blog post is 37 seconds. This time is driven down by people who quickly bounce off a page after realizing that it isn’t what they need, but it also clearly shows that people aren’t thoroughly reading articles. They might be more likely to look at a few headings first or just search for key terms.

Social Media

Social media is an interesting thing when we consider articles online. What distinguishes a Facebook post from an article outside of the platform it is on? A tweet might not be an article, but what determines the length of an article? And what about a whole Twitter thread that is as long as a short article? How should we count that? People can easily share and create what are basically full articles on their social media accounts.

Many of these questions are subjective, and most authorities that might deign to try and make a definition would merely be trying to assign subjective values to it as well. A picture on Instagram is likely not an article, but that is not to say that articles cannot be published on social media. In fact, some sites such as Medium could be argued as a form of social media, depending on your criteria.

Yet to put some context on the size and scope of social media, there are 293,000 statuses updated on Facebook every minute. And that’s just the largest social media network by itself. And while most of these aren’t article-worthy, many might be, and many might ride the line somewhere in-between an article and a quick comment.

Academic Research

While many of us might focus on the news articles and the fun pieces that make their way across the internet every day, the internet started and grew mainly as an academic effort. It continues to be a place where academics and researchers can share a lot of information and articles while getting a lot of information for their research. Even a middle school student can tell you it is an excellent tool.

While the exact amount can be tough to count, there are estimates that there are more than 30,000 scientific journals in operation, and 2 million articles are published each year in these publications. This averages out to almost 5,500 articles per day. That is a lot of information, though it begs the question of how much of it is new or valuable.

Oddly enough, the pure volume of academic research published online has led to a problem in academia. There is too much research to pay attention to, even if some things are important. That leads to articles with problematic methodologies getting ignored or accepted as fact, and it can lead to astounding research getting lost in the growing digital pile.

And while having more information available is always good, it is only so good if the information is necessary. The internet has globalized academia even further and has made academia more competitive as a result. This means there is increased pressure on professionals in their fields and professors to publish new papers and research, even when there is little benefit to doing so. And on the other side of the problem, there are predatory journals that engage in “pay to publish” schemes. In general, the entire system has become commercialized, leading to some corruption in the industry. And while commercialization has become a significant part of the internet and keeps it going, academia is a different matter with different higher priorities.

All of this is to say that while there are more and more academic articles being published online, it might not necessarily represent an increase in knowledge or the number of people reading such things, as it might in other sectors.

The Dark and Deep Web

What you can find online with a search on Google is more than enough for most people, but the internet is comprised of more than what is easily found. On top of the internet, which you use most of the time or see the surface of, there are also the dark web and the deep web to consider. 

The Deep Web and the Dark Web are two distinct things:

• The Dark Web is a collection of sites and pages with hidden IP addresses only accessible through special software such as TOR. The Dark Web has a reputation for being a dangerous place where illicit exchanges occur, and this is to some degree true. However, that’s not all there is. One can find articles there, and other things such as a book club, relatively normal shopping, and discussion boards for all sorts of topics. It is hard to get a handle on how large the Dark Web is by its very nature, but it is a small percentage compared to the rest of the internet.
• The Deep Web is a little different. It is the sites that are not indexed. You generally need a specific address to access the sites, and they won’t be things you find just by browsing around. Nonetheless, there are articles (perhaps meant for a limited audience) within the Deep Web. Generally, think of the deep web as the things you need to log in for or enter a form. Gmail.com is easily accessible and searchable, but your password-protected email address on the site is more a part of the Deep Web. Suppose access to articles is part of a subscription or for a select few people with access. In that case, those pieces could contribute to the number of articles online, but not countable or readily accessible.

Note that the dark and deep web are not necessarily entirely related to topics that might be controversial or problematic (especially the deep web, which is normal). However, it is nearly impossible to index both of these things by their very design, and the estimates of the number of articles on them could vary wildly.  

For comparison, the surface web only comprises about 4 percent of the internet when it comes to the pure amount of online data. However, data is a poor measurement of the total percentage of content. A single 4K film can use thousands of times as much data as a single article. A catastrophic data breach would need to occur to get information on the exact composition of the number of articles on the deep web. And even then, we wouldn’t know how many are being added or changed every day.

Article Updates and Revisions

Many of the best articles and resources online are those that are updated regularly. For example, an article that reviews the latest computer monitors won’t be beneficial two years after it was written, at least without some updates. So outlets will often use the same link address and page on their website and update it with heavy revisions or a new article.

This begs the question: how much does an article need to be updated to be considered a new article? A fix to a few typos isn’t a new article. Still, an entirely new dataset is different, as would an entirely new list of product recommendations attached to new information. 

In truth, the major articles (the ones that consistently rank at the top of search rankings and are used by many people every day) are updated regularly, if not constantly. You should think of them as ships with a bunch of parts regularly getting replaced. And while the trend presents a difficulty in considering the number of articles published every day, it’s a necessary part of the online ecosystem.

Difficulties Gathering Information

Nothing can get a complete picture of the internet, as the internet is more than one network and is in many ways walled off and segmented depending on where one is looking and where one is. Your “internet” might look very different from what the “internet” might be in China, must less extremely restrictive countries such as North Korea. It is a worldwide effort, and some Networks and areas, such as China, are a bit more secretive about what goes on. As a result, we cannot be precise about the number of articles created, published, and deleted every day.

Furthermore, given the more philosophical questions we’re bringing up here, any other survey or study will not necessarily be more valid than the others. It is easy to check the number of pages on the internet, at least relatively speaking. The same goes for the number of websites. That information is well-documented by tech giants and interested parties, partially to measure the expansion of the internet. On the other hand, checking what constitutes an article is a much more complex and subjective task.

And then there is the factor of time, or rather the fact that the number of articles will shift every day, and articles get deleted or updated regularly. Is it possible to so easily quantify something that is constantly changing and under construction? Any studies will be quickly outdated, and the most we can get is snapshots of the past.

Therefore, we hope that you were able to get a sense of the scope of the internet and the number of articles online, and the number that gets published every day but getting an exact answer to the question is impossible without so many assumptions that it puts the answer in question.

Who Creates All of These Articles?

Writers, of course. Yet that answer is a bit simplistic. The more detailed explanation depends on the circumstances of the articles as well as the goals of the piece. Some articles are meant to inform people about products, in which case reviewers and marketers take the lead in creating and commissioning articles. In other instances, interested people, academics, and people with strong opinions about a topic their passionate about can all create a website or join an existing one and publish articles on it.

There are also people who write articles partially or entirely for a living. The amount they write each day can vary greatly, but many people are dedicated to making the internet more informative. Some work quickly, and some have a slower schedule, but they are dedicated to creating as much as possible and making the content and information as high-quality as possible.

And on top of the writers, there is more that goes into the articles you read than someone putting words on a page. There is often (hopefully) an editing process to remove typos, errors, and other distracting elements. The writers might do this themselves, but often they do not. Additionally, photographers or graphic artists might work directly and indirectly on visual accompaniments to the articles you see online.

The articles you read online are the effort of multiple people, more often than not. Everything you see online, good or bad, was created by someone. And there are sometimes entire teams in charge of the major articles that get the most traffic. And those articles can bring in a lot of money for site owners and companies, so there is an incentive to get the writing done right and create the best articles possible (as well as work on SEO).

Conclusion

While it might seem like a simple question, many more questions and factors go into it. There are millions of articles (if not billions) to read online. What will you read next? Which ones do you think you will read in your lifetime? If the statistics are to be believed, most haven’t been written yet. We hope that you learned more about the online landscape and what is written on it. We also invite you to return to this page if you need to reference it again.