NomansiteNews / 1 September 2026
What this register counts, and what it refuses to count
There is no registry of web studios anywhere — Wikidata lists 119 design firms for the entire world. So we built one from things nobody publishes as a list, and we count only what can be observed.
A directory of agencies is easy to fill and impossible to trust: everyone describes themselves, and the description is the product. We wanted the opposite — a register where every figure is either measured by us or clearly attributed to somebody else.
Where the studios come from
Three sources, none of them a list anyone publishes. OpenStreetMap knows where studios sit: an office tagged as graphic design, web design, advertising or IT, carrying a website tag. Footers of other people's websites carry the name of whoever built them — Site by, Realisierung, Разработка сайта — in twenty languages. And award directories and agency catalogues credit the studio behind the work.
The one number that is ours
A studio enters the register proper on its second signature. One is an observation, not a verdict: a client's marketing department can sign a footer once, and so can a contractor with a single job. Two is an occupation. The count of signatures is the only figure here nobody else has — we saw those sites and read those footers, and no studio can report it to us.
What we refuse
Ratings and reviews are absent: this register records what can be observed, not what can be opined. Contact addresses are collected and not published — putting a compiled list of addresses on an open page devalues it and changes what it is. And a page on a builder platform is not a studio's domain, however the catalogue lists it.
The method is described in full on How this register is built.