Google has reportedly been “dethroned” as the king of the Internet. According to web infrastructure company Cloudflare, a new brand has now claimed the title of most popular web domain on the Internet.
And while you may have thought that sites like Facebook, Instagram and Microsoft may have been the likely contenders, it is actually relative newcomer TikTok that has overtaken Google to the coveted top spot.
Measuring the “most popular website” on the Internet used to be a relatively simple concept. “Back in the day”, to measure this metric you’d simply record the estimated number of website visits. But as the Internet has evolved, so too has how we interact with websites and web domains.
Most notably, this means including how many people use the mobile app of a domain since this can often exceed its respective website visits. This of course would be true of brands that are known most prolifically because of their mobile apps, such as TikTok and SnapChat, and not their traditional presence on the World Wide Web. (The same issue applies to measuring the popularity of TV programs, which also now needs to take into account on-demand and live streaming technologies and not just how many people are watching on their TV sets.)
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So while Google still reigns supreme (by far) when it comes to traditional website visits (i.e. visiting Google.com on a web browser), when we also count more modern types of online traffic (mobile app usage) it is now TikTok that reigns supreme.
TikTok is a Chinese owned video sharing platform that allows its users to upload short videos with their friends and the public, often dancing or miming to audio and musical soundtracks. The platform is known for its short (in length) videos and that they play automatically when you scroll through them.
TikTok has had its share of controversies on its road to the top spot. In 2020, TikTok was banned in India and was accused of spreading misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, it was also announced that Donald Trump was attempting to ban TikTok from the United States, calling it a threat to national security.
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But the fact that, at least according to Cloudflare, TikTok is now the most popular website on the Internet (technically the most popular web domain since its app isn’t really a website) is an interesting reflection on our changing online habits.
2021 told a different story. It was on February 17, 2021, that TikTok got the top spot for a day. Back in March, TikTok got a few more days and also in May, but it was after August 10, 2021, that TikTok took the lead on most days. There were some days when Google was #1, but October and November were mostly TikTok’s days, including on Thanksgiving (November 25) and Black Friday (November 26).
It sets up an interesting duel for the rest of 2022. Can Google reclaim the top spot that it has held for so many years, or will TikTok hold on? Or perhaps could another domain get involved in the fight? We can only wait and see – but in the meantime, this is how the top ten stacked up as 2021 checked out.
1 TikTok.com
2 Google.com
3 Facebook.com
4 Microsoft.com
5 Apple.com
6 Amazon.com
7 Netflix.com
8 YouTube.com
9 Twitter.com
10 WhatsApp.com