Trends on the World Wide Web

The Internet Archive is a massive (as in, more than 15 million gigabytes!) archive of the Internet.  Alexa is an Amazon-owned company that provides web traffic data on the Internet.  Combining these two services, I could do a quick analysis of how the World Wide Web has evolved over the past several years.

The following is a listing of the top 20 websites in the world in March 2019 and the net change for each website since February 2010 in parentheses:

1. Google.com
2. Youtube.com (+2)
3. Facebook.com (-1)
4. Baidu.com (+4)
5. Wikipedia.com (+3)
6. Qq.com (+4)
7. Taobao.com (+14)

8. Yahoo.com (-4)

9. Tmall.com (new)
10. Amazon.com (+10)
11. Twitter.com (+1)
12. Sohu.com (+31)
13. Jd.com (new)
14. Live.com (-9)
15. Sina.com.cn (new)
16. Vk.com (new)
17. Instagram.com (new)
18. Weibo.com (new)
19. 360.cn (new)
20. Reddit.com (new)
21. 38 Google.co.in (-25)
22. 51+ Google.co.jp (-15+)
23. 25 LinkedIn (+7)
24. 28 Yahoo.co.jp (-17)

Some observations from last year (2018)

On the Internet, once a website has a critical mass of users, it becomes extremely difficult to beat them.  The top websites are entrenched: Google (and YouTube), Facebook, Baidu, and Wikipedia.

Yahoo has been in slow decline over the years.  All sites owned by Microsoft (including LinkedIn) have been losing popularity over recent years.

Tmall, Instagram, and 360.cn have become popular over the past year.

As Chinese citizens use the Internet more, Chinese sites Baidu, QQ, Taobao, Tmall, Sohu, JD, and others have been on the rise.

Amazon has established itself as THE place to shop online for English-speakers.

Personal blogs are going away as people migrate to social networking sites.

While the popular websites in America have been relatively stable, there have been big movers internationally.  Of particular note are VK.com becoming the most popular social network in Russian-speaking countries and Weibo gaining popularity in China.

The most startling drop in popularity comes from MySpace.  In 2010 it was the 16th most popular website on the Internet.  Today it is largely irrelevant (but still around!).

2018 Conclusions

As the internet becomes more pervasive outside of America, non-English websites are beginning to rival English sites in popularity. Asia simply has many more people than Europe and North America. All of the most popular websites make use of social networking to some extent, and social networks are now what define the World Wide Web. More people are surfing the internet from mobile devices.

The 2019 list

Here’s the top 20 list for March 2019, with changes since February 2017 in parentheses.

1. Google.com
2. Youtube.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Baidu.com
5. Wikipedia.com (+1)
6. Qq.com (+3)
7. Taobao.com (+6)
8. Yahoo.com (-3)
9. Tmall.com (+1)
10. Amazon.com (-2)
11. Twitter.com (+5)
12. Sohu.com (+2)
13. Jd.com (new)
14. Live.com (-2)
15. Sina.com.cn (new)
16. Vk.com (-1)
17. Instagram.com (+4)
18. Weibo.com (new)
19. 360.cn (new)
20. Reddit.com (new)
21. 8Google.co.in (-1)
22. 14Google.co.jp (-3)

Most notable this year are the continued rise of Chinese websites like Baidu, QQ, and Taobao. Reddit lost a lot of ground in 2018. The sites that are trending upward in 2019 are the Chinese sites.