Digital 2022: The World’s Top Websites
The latest research from GWI reveals that people have various motivations for going online, and that variety is fully evident in the latest rankings of the world’s top websites too.
Each of the rankings featured in our complete Digital 2022 Global Overview Report – from Semrush, SimilarWeb, and Alexa Internet – has a slightly different take on the top 20, but many of the underlying themes remain the same.
Note that our charts for Semrush and Alexa Internet show traffic ranks based on global activity in the most recent month, whereas SimilarWeb’s data is based on traffic throughout full-year 2021, providing a useful alternative perspective.
Typer of website visited
Just before we look at the rankings of individual web domains, it might be helpful to look at the top types of website visited and mobile apps used around the world.
Based on working-age internet users say they do online, GWI reports that communications platforms come out top in the rankings, with chat apps and messengers, and social networks taking the top two spots.
Meanwhile – as we’ll explore in more detail below – search engines still rank highly too.
Similarly, it’s interesting to note that shopping makes the top four, but the data for the individual sites which come out top in this category may surprise you (see below).
There are a few more surprises in the chart below too, so click to enlarge it if you’d like to explore the full ranking.
All the world’s knowledge
In keeping with “finding information” being the top motivation for going online, it’s perhaps no surprise to see google.com at the top of all three rankings.
Semrush’s data shows that Google’s primary dot-com domain attracts almost 3 billion unique visitors each month, although it’s worth noting that this figure doesn’t equate directly to unique individuals.
Remember that this is just traffic to google.com though, and doesn’t include searches conducted directly within the “address” bar of a browser, or traffic to the company’s local country sites (e.g. google.co.uk).
For context, Google still dominates the global search market, with Statcounter data putting Google’s share of the global search market at 91.42 percent.
Your heart’s content
YouTube comes second across all three rankings, reinforcing the importance of entertainment and video content in our daily digital lives.
Semrush’s analysis of click-stream data indicates that youtube.com attracts around 1.7 billion unique visitors per month.
However, it’s important to stress that this figure doesn’t include activity within the platform’s mobile apps, which likely accounts for a significant – and possibly dominant – share of overall YouTube activity.
For context, you’ll find details of YouTube’s global advertising reach below.
Social vs. ecommerce
Once we get to third place in the rankings, however, things start to differ.
Semrush and SimilarWeb both place Facebook third in their rankings, but Alexa Internet – which tends to have different data for traffic in China – places Tmall, QQ, Baidu, and Sohu all above Facebook, pushing facebook.com down to 7th place in Alexa’s ranking.
Overall, Alexa ranks 10 Chinese domains in its global top 20, with Chinese ecommerce platforms performing particularly well.
What’s more, Tmall, Taobao and JD.com all rank higher than Amazon in Alexa Internet’s global top 20.
Meanwhile, Semrush and SimilarWeb both report that instagram.com is one of the world’s visited web domains, which may come as a surprise to readers who see the platform as an app-centric environment.
This may also be the case for whatsapp.com, which places 11th in SimilarWeb’s ranking for full year 2020.
Sadly, the publicly available data doesn’t offer any insights into what people are actually doing on the websites of these usually app-centric social media platforms, but it’s well worth marketers taking some time to consider whether these unexpected user behaviours may impact how their content appears in situ.
World's Top 20 Websites Ranked by SimilarWeb January 2022 DataReportal
This trend may apply beyond the platforms featured in these lists too.
Indeed, Cloudflare reported that – according to its data – tiktok.com was the world’s number one most-visited internet domain at the end of 2021, even ranking ahead of google.com.
Old favourites still going strong
If this is your first time reading our Global Digital Reports, you may be surprised to see Yahoo! continue to make the top 10 in Semrush And SimilarWeb’s rankings.
However, despite rarely making media headlines, yahoo.com has been a consistent feature in these rankings throughout our Global Digital Reports series.
Indeed, the platform still attracts more than 400 million unique visitors per month, which means that it’s still more popular than adult content.
But while we’re on the subject, we’d be remiss not to mention that adult sites still feature heavily in these rankings, with three such sites featuring in the global top 20 rankings of both Semrush and SimilarWeb.
For context, the data indicate that roughly half a billion people visit adult sites each month, spending a combined monthly total of more than 1.6 billion hours on the top three sites alone.
That means that – in any given month – these three sites account for as much of the world’s time as Squid Game did in the first 28 days after its launch.
You may also be interested to learn that the vast majority of traffic to these sites – more than 80 percent of overall visits – comes from mobile phones.
Now you know…
Want to learn more about what the world is doing online in 2022? Check out our full Digital 2022 Global Overview Report by clicking here.
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