Technology
PUBLISHED
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Late last year, everyone's favorite search engine (and all its other services such as Google Maps) was knocked off the top spot of the Earth's most popular website domain.
According to Cloudflare Radar's popularity ranking, the tech giant was knocked down to the second most popular domain by a surprise (relative) newcomer. TikTok, which remains legal in the US despite the best efforts of lawmakers, beat all other social media competitors to the top spot. Late last year, this is how rankings stood.
Top 10 most popular domains in late 2021
1. TikTok.com2. Google.com3. Facebook.com4. Microsoft.com5. Apple.com6. Amazon.com7. Netflix.com8. YouTube.com9. Twitter.com10. WhatsApp.com
The popular video-sharing app TikTok first took the number 1 spot in February 2021 for only a day. However in March, TikTok claimed the top spot for a few more days, before becoming the most popular website on most days in August. The website surpassed Facebook as the Internet's favorite social media platform in terms of traffic, though Facebook remains the platform with the most users worldwide.
However, TikTok's dominance of the top spot over Google or Facebook was not to last, according to Cloudfare's review of the most popular websites of 2022.
Top 10 most popular domains of 2022
1. Google2. Facebook3. Apple, TikTok5. YouTube6. Microsoft7. Amazon Web Services8. Instagram9. Amazon10. iCloud, Netflix, Twitter, Yahoo
In other changes, WhatsApp has slipped out of the top 10, while Twitter slipped down to a joint 10th place with Yahoo. In terms of social media sites, Facebook reclaimed the top spot, closely followed by Meta's own Instagram.
Top 10 most popular social media sites (by traffic)
1. Facebook2. TikTok3. Instagram4. Twitter5. Snapchat6. LinkedIn7. Discord8. Reddit9. Pinterest10. Kwai
It should be noted that adult websites are excluded by the analysis of traffic to all websites. In an analysis that included adult websites, by Statista, Pornhub snuck in at number 10.
