Most Popular Websites by Web Traffic (1993-2022)

Most popular website since 1993

Over the past 30 years, the Internet has grown at an astounding pace.

In 1993, there were fewer than 200 websites available on the World Wide Web. Fast forward to 2022 and that number has risen to 2 billion.

This animated graphic James Eagle provides a historical perspective on the evolution of the Internet, showing the most popular websites over the years from 1993 to 2022.

90’s to early 2000’s: Dial-up Internet

It was possible to use the early Internet as early as the 1970s, but the more user-centric and widely accessible version we think of today didn’t really come until the early 1990s with dial-up modems. did not do it.

Dial-up allowed users to access the Web through modems connected to active telephone lines. In the 1990s, there were several different portals for using the Internet, such as Prodigy and CompuServe, but AOL quickly became the most popular.

AOL has held the top spot as the most visited website for almost a decade. By June 2000, the online portal was 400 million monthly visitsAt the time, there were approximately 413 million Internet users worldwide.

But as broadband Internet hit the market and dial-up became obsolete, AOL lost ground and a new Web site, Yahoo, took the top spot.

Mid-2000s: Yahoo vs. Google

Founded in 1994, Yahoo began as a Web directory originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”.

As the company began to gain momentum, its name was changed to Yahoo, which became a backronym that stood for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

Yahoo grew rapidly and by the early 2000s was the most popular website on the Internet. He held the top spot for several years, and by April 2004, Yahoo’s monthly visits had reached his 5.6 billion.

But Google was close to it. Founded in 1998, Google started out as a simpler and more efficient search engine, and its website quickly became popular.

Interestingly, Google was Yahoo’s default search engine in the early 2000s, but in 2004 Yahoo abandoned Google in favor of its own search engine technology.

In the years that followed, Google and Yahoo competed fiercely, swapping both names for the top spot on the list of most popular websites. Then, in the 2010s, Yahoo’s trajectory began heading south after a series of lost opportunities and unsuccessful moves.

This cements Google’s position at the top and the website is still the most popular website as of January 2022.

Late 2000s and early 2010s: Social Media Comes to Chat

Although Google has held the top spot for nearly two decades, it’s worth highlighting the emergence of social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

YouTube and Facebook weren’t the first social media platforms to grab attention. MySpace became a success in his 2007. At one point he was the third most popular website on the World Wide Web.

But YouTube and Facebook ushered in a new era of social media platforms. Both platforms came about at the same time that smartphone innovation was upending the mobile phone industry. With the design of the iPhone and his 2008 introduction of the App Store, accessing the internet from his mobile device has never been easier.

As of January 2022, YouTube and Facebook are still the second and third most visited websites on the internet.

2020s: Google is synonymous with the internet

Google is by far the leading search engine, accounting for about 90% of web, mobile and in-app searches.

What will be the most popular websites in a few years? Can Google continue to hold the top spot? No signs of the internet giant slowing down anytime soon, but history can tell us something If so, that means things change. And don’t get too comfortable at the top.

This article was published as part of the Visual Capitalist Creators Program. The program features data-driven visuals from your favorite creators around the world.