Google Dethroned from the Most-visited Website of the Year
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▲Dancer Charli D’Amelio is the most followed TikToker (Photo: Rich Polk/Getty)
TikTok has surpassed Google as the most-visited website of the year, remaining the most popular domain globally even on Black Friday, new research has found.
The short video-sharing platform, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, received more internet traffic than Google’s search engine, maps, translate or Drive services in 2021, according to web performance and security company Cloudflare’s internet traffic rankings.
TikTok, which was launched in 2016, initially attracted a mass global audience thanks to its viral dance and lipsyncing videos but has snowballed into an enormously popular source of cooking, makeup, sports and entertainment content with more than one billion monthly active users worldwide.
While Instagram and Twitter tend to elevate the followings of existing celebrities, TikTok’s most-followed creators are previous unknowns, having made household names out of American dancer Charli D’Amelio, Italian comedian Khaby Lame and Philippino singer Bella Poarch.
The platform also ranked as the most popular social media domain, according to Cloudflare’s analysis, toppling the 17-year old Facebook from the top spot.
Facebook’s ranking dropped to fourth following its mass outage on 4 October, which affected its traffic ranking for a full week, Cloudflare’s Radar service found – the lowest listing ever recorded for the company.
Google had effortlessly topped Cloudflare’s rankings between September and December 2020, when TikTok registered as the seventh or eighth most-visited site.
TikTok became the most popular site for the first time on 17 February 2021, returning to the top spot again in March and May, but it wasn’t until August when TikTok began to take the lead consistently.
The Top 10 Most Popular Domains Of 2021
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
The platform managed to attract significantly more traffic than much older, established tech giants Microsoft, Apple and Amazon, demonstrating how swiftly it has found an engaged global audience.
Its rapid ascendance comes amid US President Joe Biden signing an executive order revoking Donald Trump’s administration’s ban in June, after the former US President attempted to prevent the platform from operating in the US if ByteDance failed to sell it over fears TikTok was relaying user data to China.
TikTok told US lawmakers that it did not hand over data to its native government, stating that US user data was stored in the US alongside backups held in Singapore.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner announced it was planning to investigate the platform in September, examining its processing of children’s personal data and whether it complies with EU laws about transferring data to other countries.
Cloudflare’s analysis examines internet traffic rather than unique users or visitors. Facebook is by far the platform with the most global users, boasting around 2.9 billion monthly active users.
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