Technology
Here’s What Happens Every Minute on the Internet in 2020
What Happens Every Minute on the Internet in 2020
In 2020, an unfathomable amount of digital activity is occurring at any given moment. This ongoing explosion in activity is the aggregate output of 4.5 billion internet users today, a number that’s projected to increase even further in coming years.
This powerful visual from Domo helps capture what happens each minute in today’s hyper-connected internet era, and it’s actually the eighth edition produced since the year 2012.
What can we learn from the evolution of what happens in an internet minute?
How Times Have Changed
Over its relatively short history, the internet has been a catalyst for both the rise and demise of new companies and platforms.
By looking at which brands have appeared in the graphic in earlier years, we can roughly chart the prominence of certain tech segments, as well as observe brands with the most staying power.
As you can see above, platforms like Tumblr, Flickr, and Foursquare showed some promise, but eventually got omitted from the graphic as they dropped off in relevance.
Meanwhile, tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have had impressive staying power, evolving to become some of the biggest companies in the world. In the process, they’ve caught up to longer-standing titans like Apple and Microsoft at the top of the food chain.
The New “New Thing”
Not surprisingly, much of the internet landscape looks different in 2020. Here are a few of the digital hot spots today.
Cash Transfers
Nearly $240,000 worth of transactions occur on Venmo per minute. This has served as a catalyst for parent company PayPal, which evolved along successfully with fintech trends. PayPal’s stock now trades at near all-time highs.
E-Commerce
Even before COVID-19 resulted in shuttered storefronts and surging online orders, e-commerce was a booming industry. It’s now estimated that $1 million is now spent per minute online. Amazon ships an astounding 6,659 packages every minute to keep up with this demand.
Collaboration Tools
In a predominantly remote-working environment, tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams host 208,333 and 52,083 users each minute respectively. Particularly in the pandemic era, it seems that this trend is here to stay.
Accelerated Turnover
The accelerated world we are in today means that many companies do not sustain a competitive advantage for as long. Social media companies have dwindled as observed above, and this is similarly reflected in the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company.
A typical companyโs tenure on the S&P 500 is expected to shrink rapidly in the next few years:
- 1964: 33 years
- 2016: 24 years
- 2027E: 12 years
Companies are shaving anywhere between 15-20 years off those highs, with estimates of further declines. This metric symbolizes the rapid evolution of the business landscape.
What Lies Ahead
Itโs seemingly easy to forget mankind is still very early in the developments when it comes to the internet. But in this short period, its rise to prominence and the broad digitization of the world has left us with a very eventful timeline.
If the last decade serves as a reference point, one can expect further and intensifying competition among tech companies. After all, the rewardโwinning in today’s digital economyโreaps much greater value.
All signs point to internet activity advancing to further heights, if not because of 5G and its associated breakthroughs, then perhaps due to the steady rise in people gaining internet access.
Technology
Ranked: The Top 50 Most Visited Websites in the World
In this visualization, we rank the top 50 websites that receive the most internet traffic, from Google to CNN.

Ranked: The Top 50 Most Visited Websites in the World
Estimates vary, but there are upwards of two billion websites in existence in 2023.
If we were to rank all of these websites according to their traffic numbers, we would see a classic power law distribution. At the low end, the vast majority of these websites would be inactive, receiving little to no traffic. On the upper end of the ranking though, a handful of websites receive the lion’s share of internet traffic.
This visualization, using data from SimilarWeb, takes a look at the 50 websites that currently sit at the top of the ranking.
Which Websites Get the Most Traffic?
Topping the list of most-visited websites in the world is, of course, Google. With over 3.5 billion searches per day, Google has cemented its position as the go-to source for information on the internet. But Google’s dominance doesn’t stop there. The company also owns YouTube, the second-most popular website in the world. Together, Google and YouTube have more traffic than the next 48 websites combined.
The power of YouTube, in particular, is sometimes not fully understood. The video platform is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. As well, YouTube has the second highest duration-of-visit numbers in this top 50 ranking. (First place goes to the Chinese video sharing website, Bilibili.)
But Google and YouTube aren’t the only big players on the internet. Other websites in the top 50 ranking include social media giants Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In particular, TikTok has seen a surge in popularity in recent years and is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
Here’s the full top 50 ranking table form:
Rank | Website | Monthly Traffic | Category | Country |
---|---|---|---|---|
#1 | google.com | 85.1B | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#2 | youtube.com | 33.0B | Streaming & Online TV | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#3 | facebook.com | 17.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#4 | twitter.com | 6.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#5 | instagram.com | 6.1B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#6 | baidu.com | 5.0B | Search Engines | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#7 | wikipedia.org | 4.8B | Dictionaries & Encyclopedias | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#8 | yandex.ru | 3.4B | Search Engines | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#9 | yahoo.com | 3.3B | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#10 | whatsapp.com | 2.9B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#11 | xvideo.com | 2.8B | Adult | ๐จ๐ฟ Czechia |
#12 | amazon.com | 2.6B | Marketplace | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#13 | pornhub.com | 2.5B | Adult | ๐จ๐ฆ Canada |
#14 | xnxx.com | 2.3B | Adult | ๐ซ๐ท France |
#15 | live.com | 2.1B | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. | |
#16 | yahoo.co.jp | 2.1B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#17 | netflix.com | 2.0B | Streaming & Online TV | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#18 | tiktok.com | 1.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#19 | docomo.ne.jp | 1.8B | Telecommunications | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#20 | reddit.com | 1.7B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#21 | office.com | 1.6B | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#22 | linkedin.com | 1.6B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#23 | dzen.ru | 1.4B | Faith & Beliefs | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#24 | samsung.com | 1.4B | Consumer Electronics | ๐ฐ๐ท S. Korea |
#25 | vk.com | 1.4B | Social Media Networks | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#26 | xhamster.com | 1.3B | Adult | ๐จ๐พ Cyprus |
#27 | turbopages.org | 1.3B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#28 | mail.ru | 1.2B | ๐ท๐บ Russia | |
#29 | naver.com | 1.2B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฐ๐ท S. Korea |
#30 | bing.com | 1.2B | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#31 | microsoftonline.com | 1.1B | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#32 | discord.com | 1.1B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#33 | twitch.tv | 1.1B | Gaming & Accessories | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#34 | bilibili.com | 1.0B | Animations & Comics | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#35 | pinterest.com | 1.0B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#36 | zoom.us | 985.9M | Computers Electronics & Tech | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#37 | weather.com | 985.7M | Weather | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#38 | qq.com | 907.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#39 | microsoft.com | 902.3M | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#40 | msn.com | 870.8M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#41 | globo.com | 840.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ง๐ท Brazil |
#42 | duckduckgo.com | 839.0M | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#43 | roblox.com | 795.7M | Gaming & Accessories | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#44 | quora.com | 775.9M | Dictionaries & Encyclopedias | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#45 | news.yahoo.co.jp | 749.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#46 | ebay.com | 728.0M | Marketplace | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#47 | aajtak.in | 724.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฎ๐ณ India |
#48 | nytimes.com | 702.2M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#49 | realsrv.com | 688.0M | Adult | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#50 | cnn.com | 684.9M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
Notable companies that have fallen out of the top 50 since our last version of this visualization are Walmart and PayPal. Notable entrants into the top 50 are Samsung and the New York Times.
The Geography of the 50 Most-Visited Websites
The United States is still home base for many of the world’s biggest websites, taking up 30 spots on this ranking. Of these 30 websites, half are operated by Big Tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Netflix.
Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea round out the top five.
Things get interesting in the “other” category, which includes six websites. Two spots are taken up by Aaj Tak and Globo, which are large media publications in India and Brazil, respectively.
The remaining four websitesโXVideos, PornHub, XHamster, and XNXXโspecialize in adult content, and are located in a variety of countries. These are often referred to as “tube sites” since they are built on the YouTube model.
Realsrv, the only adult-oriented site in the top 50 located in the U.S., is interesting to delve into as well, since it’s far from a household name. The website essentially supports advertising efforts by redirecting users away from the content they were viewing over to another page (generally premium adult content). This is one of the key ways that adult websites earn revenue.
Where does this data come from?
Source: SimilarWeb
Notes: Websites listed include “all meaningful subdomains”, and categories in the graphic follow SimilarWeb’s categorization system. This is the third version of this graphic. As with previous versions, we aim to use data from November for the sake of consistency and to avoid seasonal fluctuations in traffic. One important detail to point out is that website traffic does not include app traffic, which is why popular platforms like WeChat don’t appear in this ranking.
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