FirstGov Facts

* The compilers of the FirstGov database discovered that the federal government

has posted about 40 million pages on the Internet. Earlier estimates ranged

from 50 million to 150 million pages on 20,000 Web sites.

* FirstGov will search all .gov and .mil pages on the Web and search .com

pages of the U.S. Postal Service.

* The portal search function can comb through 500 million pages of text

in a quarter of a second, conduct 200,000 searches simultaneously and

100 million searches daily. For each page that contains the search term,

it returns a brief summary of the contents and the Web address.

* Portal operators will keep track of which Web pages are visited most and

inform agencies about the information the public wants most, helping agencies

design more consumer-friendly Web sites.

Source: Fed-Search Foundation and the General Services Administration