Internet Publishing & Web Search Portals NAICS 519290
Unlock access to the full platform with more than 900 industry reports and local economic insights.
Get access to this Industry Profile including 18+ chapters and more than 50 pages of industry research.
Industry Summary
The 8,000 Internet publishing and web search firms in the US provide online media, broadcasting services, and search capabilities for the Internet. Internet publishing firms help clients develop and distribute online media including books, magazines, journals, newspapers, greeting cards, directories, coupon books, atlases and guides, dictionaries, yearbooks, and comic books. Internet broadcasters stream music, videos, video games, news, worship services and other live and recorded digital media. Web search portal firms primarily generate and maintain massive, searchable databases of Internet addresses and content, but may also offer services such as email, auctions, news, and exclusive content.
Cookies, Privacy & Regulation
The use of “cookies” by web portals, advertisers and content providers allows them to mine user data themselves, reducing internet publishers’ control over that data and their ability to sell it.
Rapid Technology Changes
The ways that people search for and consume information and entertainment are constantly evolving.
Recent Developments
Mar 13, 2025 - Online Marketplace For Independent Bookstores Launches E-Book App
- Bookshop, an online marketplace for independent bookstores, has launched an e-book app for Android and Apple devices. The app allows customers to buy digital books from more than 2,000 partnering independent bookstores which receive a portion of sales. E-books are about 1 of every 6 books sold and independent bookstores aren’t part of that business, according to Bookshop founder Andy Hunter. Amazon is estimated to control as much as 50% of the physical-book market and at least 80% of the e-book market, thanks in part to its popular Kindle e-reader.
- Artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has added its search engine to its AI ChatGPT chatbot. ChatGPT will automatically determine which questions to route through ChatGPT Search, or users can tap a new “Search the web” icon in the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT Search shows summarized answers from different online sources, as well as “rich” content like embedded photos and YouTube videos.
- More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, according to a study published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. Researchers say that the results of an examination of more than seven million digitally published items indicate that systems to preserve papers online have failed to keep pace with the growth of research output. Kate Wittenberg, managing director of the digital archiving service Portico, warns that small publishers are at higher risk of failing to preserve articles than are large ones. “It costs money to preserve content,” she says, adding that archiving involves infrastructure, technology, and expertise that many smaller organizations do not have access to.
- Internet publishing and web search portal industry employment increased slightly during the first month of 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Internet publishing and search portal sales are forecast to increase at an 8.37% compounded annual rate from 2024 to 2028, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.
Industry Revenue
Internet Publishing & Web Search Portals
Industry Structure
Industry size & Structure
The typical Internet publishing and web search portal firm operates out of a single location and generates about $42.5 million annually.
- The Internet publishing and web search portal industry consists of about 8,000 companies which employ about 320,000 workers and generate about $340 billion annually.
- Most companies are small - about 82% have a single location and 70% employ less than 5 workers.
- The industry is concentrated with the 20 largest firms accounting for 74% of industry revenue.
- Large publishing and broadcasting firms include Kindle Direct, Blurb, Lulu, Issuu, Evites, Wikipedia, Statista, Pandora, YouTube and Netflix.
- The largest search portals are owned by technology and telecommunications firms: Alphabet (Google), Microsoft (Bing), Verizon (Yahoo) and Facebook Business. Large vertically-integrated portals include Kayak (travel), Amazon and eBay (e-commerce), LinkedIn (jobs) and WebMD (health).
- The industry is geographically concentrated with 25% of establishments located in California, 9% in New York, 7% in Florida and 6% in Texas.
Industry Forecast
Industry Forecast
Internet Publishing & Web Search Portals Industry Growth
Vertical IQ Industry Report
For anyone actively digging deeper into a specific industry.
50+ pages of timely industry insights
18+ chapters
PDF delivered to your inbox
