AlltheWeb, which is operated by the Norwegian company Fast Search & Transfer, said it had indexed some 2.1 billion Web pages, versus Google's 2.07 billion. The results it lists includes plain text pages as well as multimedia, video, MP3 music, and software pages.

Google, whose name has become synonymous with Internet search, did not comment specifically on the challenge from AlltheWeb. But a spokesman for the popular site noted that size was not the sole criteria in building an effective search engine.

He said Google was also focused on the delivering fresh and relevant results, and offering a user-friendly service.