Reports out of the Googleplex are purporting that Google’s search database has hit a significant mark…it’s finally tipped over the 1 trillion URL (web pages/files) mark.

Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj, two Google software engineers from the web search infrastructure team, made the unexpected discovery. In an awe filled statement on the Google blog, the engineers shared:

“We’ve known it for a long time: the web is big…Our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1,000,000,000,000 unique URLs on the web at once!”

Google doesn’t index “every” page and file on the web (to maintain relevance and avoid duplicate content), so the actual web is significantly larger. However, Google’s database does represent the biggest index of all the search engines.

As the team point out: “…we’re proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine, and our goal always has been to index all the world’s data.”

While impressive stats about Google’s index and the size of the web are great to marvel at, it should also set off some alarm bells for website owners.

As Google’s index continues to grow at unprecedented levels (remember it was only 1 billion URLs in 2000), it also becomes harder to stand out in the “sea of information”.

It’s a simple equation. More web pages mean more search engine competition, which increases the pressure on site owners relying on the web to drive their business.

So a burgeoning Google index, reinforces the need for you to have a strong ongoing SEO and search marketing campaign in place. Google’s index milestone is no reason for celebration for site owners - it just raises the pressure!