Short video-sharing platform TikTok has dethroned Google to become most popular in late 2021, data released by Cloudflare, a web security and performance company shows. These two were followed by domain names of tech giants Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Twitter and WhatsApp.
This was a huge jump from 2020 when TikTok was nowhere near Google. In 2020, Google remained at the top, followed by Facebook and Microsoft. TikTok, however, was on the 7th spot. The Facebook-owned Instagram domain, which was on the 9th spot last year, was pushed out from the top 10 list this year.
As per the Cloudflare report, TikTok first got on the top spot for a day on February 17, 2021. Back in March, TikTok got a few more days and also in May, but it was after August 10, 2021, that TikTok took the lead on most days.
“There were some days when Google was #1, but October and November were mostly TikTok’s days, including on Thanksgiving (November 25) and Black Friday (November 26),” the report adds.
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
Notably, TikTok has been banned in India for security reasons.
The report said the Facebook domain was steadily number #2 across 2020, but with TikTok going up Facebook is now a solid #3, followed by Microsoft (Office365 and Teams numbers are included there) and Apple.com (App Store and Apple TV+ numbers are included).
It said since January 2021, Amazon jumped in front of Apple. But Apple got back in front, after September, with some exceptions like November 28, 2021, the day before Cyber Monday — and also December 1 and 6.
The report says that Netflix also surpassed Amazon in December 2020, especially around Christmas week. On some days around 2020 Christmas, Netflix was even higher than Apple, in #4, that is the case with December 23, 25, and from December 29 to January 2, 2021.
Social media domains also continued high on Cloudflare ranking. The nine main social media apps were all in its top 100 list of most popular global domains — the only one out is Quora.com (during 2021 it was between #687 and #242). In this list too, TikTok topped the chart, followed by Facebook and YouTube.
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