Other services claim to have more than 90% of the Internet in their database, a total of almost 8 million pages. However, if you read the fine print, you'll realize that they haven't really indexed all 8 million pages. In fact, they've only indexed the text of about 1 million pages. For the other 7 million pages, their database only contains the link that points to the page -- and the link always contains much less information. That's like claiming that an encyclopedia has 24 volumes, when it really has just 3 volumes plus 21 volumes worth of "See also" cross-references without the text of the cross-referenced articles themselves.
We believe that the most honest way of measuring the size of a web database is to count the number of full-text articles. And by that count, excite offers the most comprehensive database on the net.
