Maps
A Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail
View the giant full-size (20 MB) version of this map.
A Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail
The internet is intangible, and because you can’t see it, it can be hard to comprehend its sheer vastness. As well, it’s difficult to gauge the relative size of different web properties. However, this map of the internet by Halcyon Maps offers a unique solution to these problems.
Inspired by the look and design of historical maps, this graphic provides a snapshot of the current state of the World Wide Web, as of April 2021. Let’s take a closer look!
But First, Methodology
Before diving into an analysis, it’s worth touching on the methodology behind this graphic’s design.
This map highlights thousands of the world’s most popular websites by visualizing them as “countries.” These “countries” are organized into clusters that are grouped by their content type (whether it’s a news website, search engine, e-commerce platform, etc).
Editor’s fun fact: Can you spot Visual Capitalist? We’re right in between TechCrunch and The Guardian above.
The colored borders represent a website’s logo or user interface. In terms of scale, each website’s territory size is based on its average Alexa web traffic ranking. The data is a yearly average, measured from January 2020 to January 2021.
Along the borders of the map, you can find additional information, from ranked lists of social media consumption to a mini-map of average download speeds across the globe.
According to the designer Martin Vargic, this map took about a year to complete.
Top 50 Most Popular Websites
Google and YouTube take up a lot of space, which is unsurprising—they’re the two highest-ranked websites on the list:
Rank | Website | Country |
---|---|---|
1 | Google.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
2 | Youtube.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
3 | Tmall.com | 🇨🇳 China |
4 | Baidu.com | 🇨🇳 China |
5 | QQ.com | 🇨🇳 China |
6 | Sohu.com | 🇨🇳 China |
7 | Facebook.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
8 | Taobao.com | 🇨🇳 China |
9 | Amazon.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
10 | 360.cn | 🇨🇳 China |
11 | Yahoo.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
12 | Jd.com | 🇨🇳 China |
13 | Zoom.us | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
14 | Wikipedia.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
15 | Weibo.com | 🇨🇳 China |
16 | Sina.com.cn | 🇨🇳 China |
17 | Live.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
18 | Xinhuanet.com | 🇨🇳 China |
19 | Microsoft.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
20 | Reddit.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
21 | Office.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
22 | Netflix.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
23 | Microsoftonline.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
24 | Panda.tv | 🇨🇳 China |
25 | Zhanqi.tv | 🇨🇳 China |
26 | Instagram.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
27 | Force.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
28 | Google.com.hk | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong |
29 | VK.com | 🇷🇺 Russia |
30 | Alipay.com | 🇨🇳 China |
31 | Csdn.net | 🇨🇳 China |
32 | Myshopify.com | 🇨🇦 Canada |
33 | Okezone.com | 🇮🇩 Indonesia |
34 | Bing.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
35 | Yahoo.co.jp | 🇯🇵 Japan |
36 | Naver.com | 🇰🇷 South Korea |
37 | Adobe.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
38 | Salesforce.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
39 | Ebay.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
40 | Twitch.tv | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
41 | Bongacams.com | 🇳🇱 Netherlands |
42 | Twitter.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
43 | Apple.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
44 | Amazon.in | 🇮🇳 India |
45 | Amazon.co.jp | 🇯🇵 Japan |
46 | Aliexpress.com | 🇨🇳 China |
47 | Aparat.com | 🇮🇷 Iran |
48 | Linkedin.com | 🇺🇲 U.S. |
49 | Huanqiu.com | 🇨🇳 China |
50 | YY.com | 🇨🇳 China |
Google has held the title as the internet’s most popular website since 2010. While Google’s popularity is well understood, the company’s dominance might be even more widespread than you’d think—across all Google-owned platforms (including YouTube) the company accounts for 90% of all internet searches.
The third highest ranked website is Tmall. For those who don’t know, Tmall is a Chinese e-commerce platform, owned by Alibaba Group. It focuses on Business-to-Consumer (B2C) transactions, and has established itself as the most popular e-commerce website in China—in Q1 2021, Tmall accounted for more than 50% of China’s B2C online transactions.
A High Level Look
When it comes to the top 50 websites overall, a majority are either social networking platforms, search engines, or online marketplaces—while this may not come as a surprise, it’s still powerful to see visualized. For instance, even a huge, well-known website like the New York Times is just a tiny country on this map.
And of course, a map of the internet isn’t complete without mention of the dark web.
While it’s challenging to determine its true size, research indicates that the dark web accounts for a large portion of the internet’s true size. And apparently, it’s growing steadily, with the help of anonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
For the most part, it’s believed that the dark web is used for unsavory reasons—however, it’s not all bad. Because of its anonymous nature, it can be used as a safe space for whistleblowing or activism.
Overall, this map, and the internet as a whole, has many places for us to explore. When you dive in, what “countries” catch your eye?
United States
Mapped: How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?
An annual income anywhere between $360,000-$950,000 can grant entry into the top 1%—depending on where you live in America.

How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?
There’s an old saying: everyone thinks that they’re middle-class.
But how many people think, or know, that they really belong to the top 1% in the country?
Data from personal finance advisory services company, SmartAsset, reveals the annual income threshold at which a household can be considered part of the top 1% in their state.
Some states demand a much higher yearly earnings from their residents to be a part of the rarefied league, but which ones are they, and how much does one need to earn to make it to the very top echelon of income?
Ranking U.S. States By Income to Be in the Top 1%
At the top of the list, a household in Connecticut needs to earn nearly $953,000 annually to be part of the one-percenters. This is the highest minimum threshold across the country.
In the same region, Massachusetts requires a minimum annual earnings of $903,401 from its top 1% residents.
Here’s the list of all 50 U.S. states along with the annual income needed to be in the 1%.
Rank | State | Top 1% Income Threshold | Top 1% Tax Rate (% of annual income) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Connecticut | $952,902 | 28.40% |
2 | Massachusetts | $903,401 | 27.15% |
3 | California | $844,266 | 26.95% |
4 | New Jersey | $817,346 | 28.01% |
5 | Washington | $804,853 | 25.99% |
6 | New York | $776,662 | 28.29% |
7 | Colorado | $709,092 | 25.86% |
8 | Florida | $694,987 | 25.82% |
9 | Illinois | $660,810 | 26.35% |
10 | New Hampshire | $659,037 | 26.25% |
11 | Wyoming | $656,118 | 24.79% |
12 | Virginia | $643,848 | 26.11% |
N/A | National Average | $652,657 | N/A |
13 | Maryland | $633,333 | 25.94% |
14 | Texas | $631,849 | 25.83% |
15 | Utah | $630,544 | 23.77% |
16 | Minnesota | $626,451 | 25.53% |
17 | Nevada | $603,751 | 25.19% |
18 | South Dakota | $590,373 | 22.99% |
19 | Pennsylvania | $588,702 | 24.95% |
20 | North Dakota | $585,556 | 24.76% |
21 | Georgia | $585,397 | 25.06% |
22 | Oregon | $571,813 | 24.66% |
23 | Arizona | $564,031 | 25.22% |
24 | Idaho | $560,040 | 23.17% |
25 | North Carolina | $559,762 | 25.31% |
26 | Montana | $559,656 | 24.46% |
27 | Kansas | $554,912 | 25.03% |
28 | Rhode Island | $548,531 | 25.26% |
29 | Tennessee | $548,329 | 25.12% |
30 | Alaska | $542,824 | 25.38% |
31 | Nebraska | $535,651 | 24.10% |
32 | Delaware | $529,928 | 25.37% |
33 | Vermont | $518,039 | 23.63% |
34 | Wisconsin | $517,321 | 24.90% |
35 | South Carolina | $508,427 | 24.40% |
36 | Michigan | $504,671 | 25.01% |
37 | Maine | $502,605 | 24.04% |
38 | Missouri | $500,626 | 24.93% |
39 | Ohio | $500,253 | 25.09% |
40 | Hawaii | $495,263 | 24.12% |
41 | Iowa | $483,985 | 24.09% |
42 | Indiana | $473,685 | 24.55% |
43 | Alabama | $470,341 | 23.82% |
44 | Oklahoma | $460,172 | 23.68% |
45 | Louisiana | $458,269 | 24.80% |
46 | Arkansas | $450,700 | 21.11% |
47 | Kentucky | $445,294 | 24.14% |
48 | New Mexico | $411,395 | 23.35% |
49 | Mississippi | $381,919 | 23.04% |
50 | West Virginia | $367,582 | 23.26% |
N/A | National Median Household Income | $75,000 | N/A |
California ($844,266), New Jersey ($817,346), and Washington ($804,853) round out the top five states with the highest minimum thresholds to make it to their exclusive rich club.
On the other end of the spectrum, the top one-percenters in West Virginia make a minimum of $367,582 a year, the lowest of all the states, and about one-third of the threshold in Connecticut. And just down southwest of the Mountain State, Mississippi’s one-percenters need to make at least $381,919 a year to qualify for the 1%.
A quick glance at the map above also reveals some regional insights.
The Northeast and West Coast, with their large urban and economic hubs, have higher income entry requirements for the top 1% than states in the American South.
This also correlates to the median income by state, a measure showing Massachusetts households make nearly $90,000 a year, compared to Mississippians who take home $49,000 annually.
How Much Do the Top 1% Pay in Taxes?
Meanwhile, if one does make it to the top 1% in states like Connecticut and Massachusetts, expect to pay more in taxes than other states, according to SmartAsset’s analysis.
The one-percenters in the top five states pay, on average, between 26–28% of their income in tax, compared to those in the bottom five who pay between 21–23%.
And this pattern exists through the dataset, with higher top 1% income thresholds correlating with higher average tax rates for the wealthy.
State Ranks | Median Tax Rate |
---|---|
Top 10 | 26.65% |
20-30 | 25.09% |
30-40 | 24.65% |
10-20 | 25.07% |
40-50 | 23.75% |
These higher tax rates point to attempts to reign in the increasing wealth disparity in the nation where the top 1% hold more than one-third of the country’s wealth, up from 27% in 1989.
Where Does This Data Come From?
Source: SmartAsset’s America’s Top 1% Is Different in Each State uses data from 2020 individual tax filings from the IRS, adjusted to 2023 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index.
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