Techcrunch just posted a story about BuiltWith – a startup that reports on the technology behind the web site. I’ve written before about ways to ID the server, the scripting language, and the CMS technology behind a site, but BuiltWith goes further and provides analysis of that data.

The BuiltWith report for ardamis.com knows that the site is running WordPress (no surprise there) on an Apache server, with the WP Super Cache plugin and Google Analytics and Google Plus One.

For each item it recognizes that a site is using, WordPress as the CMS, for example, it provides statistical data on the number of sites on the web also using that technology, along with trend information showing whether its use is increasing or decreasing. It’s really pretty sad to see that Apache use continues to steadily trend down, even while it continues to account for the majority of web servers. HTML5 as a Doctype is on the rise, though, along with the use of microdata.

BuiltWith can also tell what other sites are using that technology, but this information is a paid service, and an expensive one, too.