The size distribution of websites

•The upper tail of the website size distribution follows Zipf's law.•The result holds for the world, Germany, and the United States.•Web traffic from China does not follow this pattern.

The upper tail of the size distribution of websites follows a power law with slope close to one (Zipf's law). This finding is robust to measuring website size by unique visitors and page views, and holds for the United States, Germany, and the world. Web traffic in China has less support for a power law.