According to world's leading search engines, the total number of web pages or addresses well exceeds 1 trillion, much more than the total population of the earth, which is just around 6.7 billion.

While Microsoft's Bing has indexed over over 1 trillion web pages, Google too has on record over a trillion discreet web addresses.

According to Bing, if one were to read through all the information stored on the web, it may take 600,000 decades of non-stop reading to finish the huge virtual stack.

Compared to last year, online population rose by 16 per cent, according to an estimate by Nielsen Online. The research firm says the total number of web users today stands around 1.46 billion.

China, the world's most populous country, is also the biggest web surfer, accounting for 338 million users, as per one estimate. However, InternetWorldStats.com (IWS) has put China's online population at 298 million.

According to IWS data, which combines figures from various sources, the total global figure for internet users stands at 1,596,270,108, around 24 per cent of world's population.

The top 5 web surfing countries according to Internet World Stats (in millions):

1. China    298
2. US   227 
3. Japan   94 
4. India   81 
5. Brazil   67.5

In terms of geographies, the regions rank as follows (in millions):

1. Asia    657.2
2. Europe    393.4
3. N America   251.3
4. L America / Caribbean  173.6
5. Africa    54.2
6. Middle East   45.9
7. Oceania / Australia  20.8