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A Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail

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Map of the internet's most popular websites

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).

Visual Capitalist on the mapEditor’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:

RankWebsiteCountry
1Google.com🇺🇲 U.S.
2Youtube.com🇺🇲 U.S.
3Tmall.com🇨🇳 China
4Baidu.com🇨🇳 China
5QQ.com🇨🇳 China
6Sohu.com🇨🇳 China
7Facebook.com🇺🇲 U.S.
8Taobao.com🇨🇳 China
9Amazon.com🇺🇲 U.S.
10360.cn🇨🇳 China
11Yahoo.com🇺🇲 U.S.
12Jd.com🇨🇳 China
13Zoom.us🇺🇲 U.S.
14Wikipedia.com🇺🇲 U.S.
15Weibo.com🇨🇳 China
16Sina.com.cn🇨🇳 China
17Live.com🇺🇲 U.S.
18Xinhuanet.com🇨🇳 China
19Microsoft.com🇺🇲 U.S.
20Reddit.com🇺🇲 U.S.
21Office.com🇺🇲 U.S.
22Netflix.com🇺🇲 U.S.
23Microsoftonline.com🇺🇲 U.S.
24Panda.tv🇨🇳 China
25Zhanqi.tv🇨🇳 China
26Instagram.com🇺🇲 U.S.
27Force.com🇺🇲 U.S.
28Google.com.hk🇭🇰 Hong Kong
29VK.com🇷🇺 Russia
30Alipay.com🇨🇳 China
31Csdn.net🇨🇳 China
32Myshopify.com🇨🇦 Canada
33Okezone.com🇮🇩 Indonesia
34Bing.com🇺🇲 U.S.
35Yahoo.co.jp🇯🇵 Japan
36Naver.com🇰🇷 South Korea
37Adobe.com🇺🇲 U.S.
38Salesforce.com🇺🇲 U.S.
39Ebay.com🇺🇲 U.S.
40Twitch.tv🇺🇲 U.S.
41Bongacams.com🇳🇱 Netherlands
42Twitter.com🇺🇲 U.S.
43Apple.com🇺🇲 U.S.
44Amazon.in🇮🇳 India
45Amazon.co.jp🇯🇵 Japan
46Aliexpress.com🇨🇳 China
47Aparat.com🇮🇷 Iran
48Linkedin.com🇺🇲 U.S.
49Huanqiu.com🇨🇳 China
50YY.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?

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Maps

Mapped: Renewable Energy and Battery Installations in the U.S. in 2023

This graphic describes new U.S. renewable energy installations by state along with nameplate capacity, planned to come online in 2023.

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Renewable and Battery Installations in the U.S. in 2023

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Renewable energy, in particular solar power, is set to shine in 2023. This year, the U.S. plans to get over 80% of its new energy installations from sources like battery, solar, and wind.

The above map uses data from EIA to highlight planned U.S. renewable energy and battery storage installations by state for 2023.

Total U.S. renewable energy and battery installations, broken down by share

Texas and California Leading in Renewable Energy

Nearly every state in the U.S. has plans to produce new clean energy in 2023, but it’s not a surprise to see the two most populous states in the lead of the pack.

Even though the majority of its power comes from natural gas, Texas currently leads the U.S. in planned renewable energy installations. The state also has plans to power nearly 900,000 homes using new wind energy.

California is second, which could be partially attributable to the passing of Title 24, an energy code that makes it compulsory for new buildings to have the equipment necessary to allow the easy installation of solar panels, battery storage, and EV charging.

New solar power in the U.S. isn’t just coming from places like Texas and California. In 2023, Ohio will add 1,917 MW of new nameplate solar capacity, with Nevada and Colorado not far behind.

Top 10 StatesBattery (MW)Solar (MW)Wind (MW)Total (MW)
Texas1,9816,4621,94110,385
California4,5554,2931238,970
Nevada6781,59602,274
Ohio121,91751,934
Colorado2301,1872001,617
New York585095591,125
Wisconsin4939921,034
Florida39780980
Kansas00843843
Illinois0363477840

The state of New York is also looking to become one of the nation’s leading renewable energy providers. The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) is making real strides towards this objective with 11% of the nation’s new wind power projects expected to come online in 2023.

According to the data, New Hampshire is the only state in the U.S. that has no new utility-scale renewable energy installations planned for 2023. However, the state does have plans for a massive hydroelectric plant that should come online in 2024.

Decarbonizing Energy

Renewable energy is considered essential to reduce global warming and CO2 emissions.

In line with the efforts by each state to build new renewable installations, the Biden administration has set a goal of achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and a net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.

The EIA forecasts the share of U.S. electricity generation from renewable sources rising from 22% in 2022 to 23% in 2023 and to 26% in 2024.

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