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The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) stock exchange has launched a new internet only index, the NASDAQ Internet Index.

The new index will track the performance of internet companies across the full spectrum of online activities, including ecommerce companies, ISP’s, search engines, web hosting and web design firms. The index will benchmark the performance of companies in the sector, giving a quick representation of where stocks including Yahoo and Google are heading.

The index itself does demonstrate the growing maturity and importance of the internet in the financial world, but having said that the NASDAQ also has indexes for a variety of market segments, including a Computer Index, a Technology Sector Index, an Ex-Tech Sector Index and indexes for countries including China and Israel; if anything the move is probably not before time. The NASDAQ also didn’t detail the makeup of the index in their release, but it wouldn’t be hard to guess that Google will be the 1000 pound Gorilla on the index and that if Google sneezes, the index is sure to plummet.