Surface web

{{short description|Websites and pages easily accessible to user agents}}

{{Wiktionary|Surface Web}}

The Surface Web (also called the Visible Web, Indexed Web, Indexable Web or Lightnet){{cite web|website=Gondwanaland.com|title=Redefining light and dark|date=November 28, 2005|url=http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/11/28/redefining-light-and-dark/}} is the portion of the World Wide Web that is readily available to the general public and searchable with standard web search engines. It is the opposite of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by a web search engine.{{cite web|last=Barratt |first=Monica|title=A Discussion About Dark Net Terminology |date=January 15, 2015

|website=Drugs, Internet, Society|url=http://monicabarratt.net/?p=5999|accessdate=June 14, 2015}} The Surface Web only consists of 10 percent of the information that is on the internet.{{Cite news|url=https://www.pinkhattech.com/2017/12/04/what-is-the-difference-between-the-surface-web-the-deep-web-and-the-dark-web/|title=What is the difference between the Surface Web, The Deep Web and the Dark Web?|work=Pink Hat Technology Management|access-date=2018-09-29|language=en-US|archive-date=2019-10-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191009132241/https://www.pinkhattech.com/2017/12/04/what-is-the-difference-between-the-surface-web-the-deep-web-and-the-dark-web/|url-status=dead}} The Surface Web is made with a collection of public web pages on a server accessible by any search engine.{{Cite news|url=https://davidenewmedia.wordpress.com/workingterms/the-surface-web/|title=The Surface Web|date=2012-05-11|work=Dark Side of the Web|access-date=2018-09-29|language=en-US}}

According to one source, {{As of|2015|6|14|df=US|lc=y}}, Google's Index of the Surface Web contains about 14.8 billion pages.{{cite web|url=http://www.worldwidewebsize.com|title=The Size of the World Wide Web|date=June 14, 2015 |accessdate=June 14, 2015|first=Maurice |last=de Kunder|website=WorldWideWebSize.com}}