Here are the most popular websites of 2021 - and the winner might surprise you

It’s a video platform - but probably not the one you think

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Video sharing platform TikTok has been named the world’s most popular website for 2021.

Web giant has Cloudflare published a list of the top 10websitesfor 2020 and 2021, based on data aggregated through its Radar service, showing that TikTok.com rose to the number one spot, leapfrogging the likes ofGoogle.com (#2), Facebook.com (#3),Microsoft.com (#4) andApple.com (#5).

Drilling deeper into the data, Cloudflare discovered that TikTok first hit the number one spot on February 17, 2021, reaching the famed position a few more times during the month. It wasn’t until August 10, 2021, that being #1 was no longer a sporadic thing, but a regular event. On days when TikTok isn’t leading the charge, Google briefly takes over.

YouTube’s moment to shine

In ablog post, Cloudflare explained that its conclusions are drawn from “aggregated data from the 1.1.1.1 PublicDNSResolver” and a “range of data” that Cloudflare has about global internet traffic patterns.

YouTubehas its day in the sun on February 2, the day when Superbowl commercials made it online, but also the day after the Myanmar coup, where a video of a fitness instructor video became a viral sensation and became immortalized through memes.

Facebook’s mostly been holding on to the #3 spot, except for October 2021, when the whole “we locked ourselves out of the car” fiasco took place. During those days, Facebook only managed to drop to #4, which speaks more about Microsoft and Apple, who have been clinging onto the fourth and fifth positions, respectively.

Cloudflare’s report also discusses the effects Squid Game had on Netflix’s positioning, the fight among e-commerce giants, and what we can expect from meta-oriented websites in 2022 and beyond.

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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