TikTok surpassed Google as the most visited website in 2021

Popular social media platform TikTok became the world’s most visited site in 2021, surpassing last year’s leader Google, according to Cloudflare. 

Bytedance’s five-year-old app has overtaken internet giant Google Search, along with Google’s other digital products like Maps and News. Last year, TikTok was ranked seventh in Cloudflare’s web traffic rankings, behind Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix and Amazon.

Cloudflare said it uses data it has on global internet traffic patterns, including app usage or a person’s visit to a site in a web browser, to determine its rankings.

Earlier in 2021, TikTok announced that it hit one billion monthly users. According to Insider Intelligence, TikTok’s global users have overtaken those of Snapchat and Twitter in 2021, marking it the third largest social network worldwide behind Facebook and Instagram. 

Insider Intelligence forecasts monthly TikTok users to grow by 15.1% to reach 755 million by 2022. This number grew 59.8% in 2020 and will increase an additional 40.8% in 2021. 

Cloudflare said that TikTok first started to top the charts as the world’s most visited site in February. However, it spiked in popularity in August, when it typically occupied the top spot for the rest of the year.

Top 10 — Most popular domains (late) 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

Top 10 — Most popular domains (late) 2020

1 Google.com

2 Facebook.com

3 Microsoft.com

4 Apple.com

5 Netflix.com*

6 Amazon.com

7 TikTok.com

8 YouTube.com

9 Instagram.com *

10 Twitter.com

*According to Cloudflare, Instagram was dropped from the 2021 list and was replaced by messaging app WhatsApp.