Life
As someone who is constantly surfing the web, it comes as no surprises that Google, the nearly two decade old search engine that has basically become a verb, tops the list of most popular websites in the United States (and the world, for that matter). Receiving 28 billion visits each month, the search engine experiences more traffic than any of the other 1.1 billion websites currently on the internet. The only site that even comes close to matching Google's visitors is the video-sharing website YouTube, with a robust 20.5 billion monthly visitors. YouTube has been owned by Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. since 2006, and over the last decade "to YouTube [something]" has even become a verb all its own. These websites have a major impact on our life, our access to information, and even dictate on some deep level how we use the web — so next time you log on, you may want to think about which sites you rely on the most.
A new infographic from Vodien, a Singaporean web hosting provider, visualizes and sorts the 100 most visited websites in the United States. Using data from the web analytics company Alexa, the diagram breaks down the type of sites that are popular and which ones are owned by which businesses. The upper echelon of sites that generate the most traffic are controlled by a few major companies, such as Facebook, which also owns Instagram ranked at number 13, and Amazon which is the fourth most-visited site, and controls five other top 100 sites including IMDB and Twitch. Banking sites, music and video streaming sites, shopping, and social networking sites make up most of the top ranks. Whether you check your phone multiple times a day to post on Twitter or Facebook, or tend to stream shows on the weekends — according to this data, you are very much not alone.
Check out the "100 Websites That Rule The Internet" infographic here, and see if your favorite site makes the list. Here is a sampling of the seven most popular websites in the United States today:
1
Google reigns supreme in the United States, surpassing the second most popular website by a margin of nearly 8 billion monthly views. Indeed, Alphabet controls quite a few sites in the top 100, including Google, Youtube, Google User Content, and Blogger. It's clear to see that Google deserves its title as most popular search engine, followed by Bing and Yahoo.
2
YouTube
If you've ever gotten lost in a YouTube spiral, clicking on video after video until suddenly it's 3 a.m., then you already understand the power of the second most popular site on the internet. Owned by Google, this video sharing platform is the only website to come close to touching the search engine's top spot in the United States.
3
As of Dec. 31, 2016, the Facebook enjoyed 1.86 billion monthly active users, cementing its place as the most popular social networking site in the world. The company bought the photo-sharing site Instagram in 2012, which is now ranked at 13th most visited site in the United States.
4
Amazon
Whether you're looking to do a little online shopping, stream your favorite movie on Prime, or ask your virtual personal assistant Alexa for the weather, Amazon probably finds its way into your daily Internet use. It is the number one shopping site in the United States, and continues to rapidly expand its reach each year.
5
Yahoo
A source for mail, sports, news and finance, Yahoo holds a lot of ground on the web. The company also owns microblogging site Tumblr, which is ranked 19th most visited site in the United States.
6
Wikipedia
The free encyclopedia, created and edited by its users makes it the source of comprehensive information on almost every topic as well as some pretty hilarious entries. Currently, the English-language version of Wikipedia is comprised of 5,359,547 articles with an average of 800 new articles added each day. If you have a question, Wikipedia most likely has it covered.
7
Since its start in 2005, the social news aggregate and discussion forum has become an important community on the internet. Like Wikipedia, the user-generated content is not always trustworthy, but you can find a thread about pretty much anything, no matter how idiosyncratic. With upvotes and downvotes, the active online community with millions of accounts are happy to weight in on each post.
Rounding out the top 10 most-visited sites are eBay, Twitter, and Netflix. So if you're planning on streaming, purchasing, or posting, times have certainly changed since Altavista ruled the 'net!
