The categories we keep finding the most of

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon clicking through a stack of digital directories that looked like they hadn't been updated since the Bush administration. It is a strange hobby. We have indexed 32,522 sites across our top six categories, and the distribution tells a very specific story about what we actually do when we think nobody is watching.

Everyone likes to pretend the internet is just one giant shopping mall or a series of corporate landing pages. The data suggests otherwise. Community is our largest bucket by a wide margin with 7,583 sites. It turns out that despite the algorithmic death grip of major social networks, people are still carving out tiny, weird corners to talk about niche hobbies and local grievances.

The builders are right behind them. We found 5,721 sites dedicated to developers and 5,699 for education. It is a bit of a mirror image. Half the web is trying to learn how to build the other half. This is where the curiosity lives, tucked away in documentation and open-source repositories that lack any aesthetic charm but possess plenty of utility.

Then we hit the professional wall. Business accounts for 4,665 sites, followed closely by SaaS at 4,473. These are the polished, slightly soulless neighborhoods of the web where everything is a solution to a problem you didn't know you had. They are functional, sure, but they lack the grit of the community forums.

Media brings up the rear of the big six with 4,381 sites. It is the smallest group here, which feels counterintuitive until you realize most modern media is just a parasite living inside a larger platform. The ones we found are the survivors who still insist on owning their own domain name.

You can see the full architectural mess for yourself at /categories.

The numbers don't lie, even if the landing pages do.