Most Popular Websites 1993 - 2023

Here's the updated version of this animation. In this data visualization video I look at the most popular websites based on monthly visits, the industry standard when comparing websites. It does not take into account page views nor unique visitors. Some of the data includes approximate numbers as the data available skipped years. In this version I've added the last three years of data up to the current month. I've also added some additional data I did not have access to last time I created this animation.
I also include screenshots of certain sites from the list as they looked during that particular year. The websites in the thumbnails include:
1993 Apple
First Apple website
1994 Amazon
Featured book search and shopping cart
1995 WebCrawler
Most popular search engine in the mid 90s
1996 Excite
Purchased WebCrawler after it's IPO that year
1997 BBC
Official launch followed by rebranding to BBCi
1998 Google
Official launch
1999 AOL
AOL Desktop kept users on AOL properties
2000 Apple
Steve Jobs regains leadership as CEO
2001 eBay
Had largest user base of any e-commerce site
2002 Walmart
First version of the site had launched a year earlier
2003 MSN
MSN Explorer displaying MSN page
2004 Yahoo
Search and landing page
2005 MySpace
Acquired by News Corp. in July for $580M
2006 MySpace
Allowed custom backgrounds and colors
2007 KZbin
Used as much bandwidth as entire internet in 2000
2008 Facebook
Introduced new design plus messenger
2009 Ask
Jeeves returns to the site
2010 Baidu
Becomes top search engine in China
2011 Amazon
Became the largest source of consumer reviews
2012 Amazon
Redesign and simplifying shopping experience
2013 MySpace
The horizontal redesign failed to captivate users
2014 Instagram
Started monetizing with video ads
2015 VK
Top social media site in Russia
2016 Twitter
The "verified" blue check-mark was unveiled
2017 Wikipedia
2018 Instagram
Introduced IGTV for long form content
2019 Facebook
Redesign Interface and added a new "care" reaction emoji
2020 Instagram
Introduced reels to compete with TikTok
2021 KZbin
Global launch of Shorts to compete with TikTok
2022 Twitter
Relaunch of Twitter Blue
Thank you for watching!
Which have been your favorite websites of all time?

[@whatever1661]

Surprised Yahoo is still on this list. Thought it was done as a big player for 20 years.

[@Raspberries9372]

I like that yahoo still exists as news source and hasn’t gone extinct.

[@txaggievet]

More shocked Amazon was not on the list, are they saying fewer people visit Amazon than Yahoo? or Bing?

[@Frightnoodle]

Be realistic guys, nobody is calling Twitter X.

[@GiveMeCakePlease]

Was X once called twitter? Wait whaaaaaaaaaaat

[@ChArEeNMeThSuKaReal]

Nah they be trippin I call it sex

[@MrVariant]

We will eventually, like Max fka HBO max. Heck magic the gathering had fat packs they now call bundles because I guess body positivity. Hard to use the old name after 6 months.

[@mattwolf7698]

I think a lot of people are also still calling it Twitter because they hate Elon.

[@JustMe-ne5dw]

I think ex-Twitter works

[@JL-sm6cg]

It's crazy to realize what web pages actually existed in 1993! I remember Webcrawler. I also used Alta Vista.

[@DefaultFlame]

I remember Alta Vista! I wasn't on the internet until the late 90s, but I still remember it.

[@Somnogenesis]

@@DefaultFlame Yep, for those of us who hit the internet in the late '90s it was Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and AltaVista that seemed to be the go-to 'front page' of the internet, i.e. search engine - or, to be more specific, search portal or 'subject tree'. When someone pointed me to Google sometime in spring 2000, however, and it was so much more simple and such a clean interface, all bets were off. It's interesting to see how little of a dent AltaVista actually made in that interim few years, and how long Lycos and Excite held on in the top few places.

[@retrotub]

Facebook is dying

[@kalegolas]

Yes, and probably Twitter to soon.

[@elfsnov]

@@kalegolas xxx

[@mainchan01]

@@kalegolas Twitter's dead already. Long live X

[@mikethenerd4525]

Im surprised Tik Tok wasn't on the list

[@iamriteshdubey]

It should be

[@Alfonso162008]

Considering the nature of TikTok, I doubt many people use their web version (at least to appear on a list like this one). I'm actually surprised to see Instagram and Whatsapp on the list, if I'm being honest.

[@mattwolf7698]

​@@Alfonso162008If this is just going by webpage hits than it quit giving a good representation of time spent on the Internet in the early 2010's.

[@Neonb88]

​@@Alfonso162008WhatsApp also surprised me. But I figured IG would be bigger

[@elksalmon84]

Website itself isn't popular and it's very buggy - almost nothing is loading.

[@tailsycream]

I love this videos and the music! Thanks

[@xx404notfound]

I like this melody.

[@Masonicon]

I still remember old website named compuserve

[@BenjyDale]

I'm more KZbin than a Facebook fan, but was nicely surprised here that YT ended up being bigger than FB. I always thought that FB was the bigger out of the 2

[@PhilMasters]

I doubt that most Facebook users go to the Website.

[@thereareonly2genders504]

I didnt know you could put asterisks in domain names.

[@stephandocrossi3324]

This is cool.

[@efuass]

So, I still have my 1st yahoo email account from 1996....so now you know I'm old. I remember back then there was a 25MB or less (I can't remember) mailbox limit...haha

[@ivan4087]

there is still limit - on gmail. they remind me of it everyday when im on my gmail accounts

[@TCHFootbalAnalytics]

Very nice.

[@StoccoPschiozzoLego]

This chart (and some others of the same massive scale) could have one bar to show the number of humans. These numbers are massive so scaling them to the population would give some perspective.

[@buddzlitehere]

Facebook said "Excuse me, coming through". 😂😂

[@Xxmystic_shadowxX]

Can anyone else imagine these videos in 20 years the videos will end up being 30 minutes to an hour long 😂🎉

[@normramsay7029]

I remember when just about every computer magazine had an AOL CD inside for you to use and join up.

[@pagodakid]

Be nice to see a breakdown by category such as general searching, shopping, social media, email, etc.

[@alang4033]

So we just gonna ignore the fact that pornhub was on the list well throughout the pandemic 😂

[@MrVariant]

Onlyfans craze lol. Though there was a legohub channel so you never know 😂. Also the Google mess made more people go on Amazon to buy Kindle books to bypass their cut on the app. Comixology, that Amazon owns, also had to do that with Apple as well. Surprised Facebook didn't die. Instagram algorithm is garbage and they entrap me with polarizing vids just to throw in jail if you disagree.

[@JPro34]

for research purposes

[@efuass]

What happened in 2008 how yahoo took over google for a couple yrs?

[@basicallyph0r]

Shout out to my guy hanging on in last place 🙌

[@RandyTheWildHorse]

Google will be number 1 now and much longer than I'm alive.

[@Brixman]

That's what they thought of Yahoo!

[@paulh2981]

I would have said that about Sears when I was a kid. Don't see them around much these days.

[@M167A1]

​@@paulh2981worked at Sears in the 90s and they shut the catalog department in 94. If they had hung on and gone online they might have been Amazon. Now there are only 11 stores left

[@towersofasia]

Never heard of that website Sears​@@paulh2981

[@kiran9s]

I read the description, and comments. The numbers are exploring nowhere. Are these daily, weeks, or monthly visits? Or are the numbers something else?

[@AceTube99999]

These are monthly visits.

[@SansWasTheHero]

Not sure what's more impressive. 2 porn sites making the list or yahoo still being on the list.

[@leonardobarrera2816]

Where do you obtain the data?

[@bryanguegan4006]

We *never knoOow~*

[@user-p44gF3ay7i]

​@@bryanguegan4006Wikipedia

[@leonardobarrera2816]

@@bryanguegan4006 Jajaja Thanks It was funny!!! (This is not sarcasmic)

[@anothertrackmom]

Website

[@anothertrackmom]

Website

[@txaggievet]

So is this saying more people still visit Yahoo and Bing than Amazon?

[@dzenacs2011]

Since my first internet experience was in 2003 i never used aol or msn

[@blackheavyblans]

January 2018 is wild :D

[@wwftroy22]

Yahoo was like what is a Google?

[@raxsavvage]

me who realised the clock isn't the months....am upset about this

[@Pianoman19]

its sad to see the 10th and 13th

[@max_biker4149]

Google was a good website, but in modern time it became really worse. I mean the main sphere - web searching

[@EnThuSiasT111]

wow ❤

[@TeddyBelcher4kultrawide]

At least I have my own IMDb page

[@Approved-rw8xw]

Goodbye BBC 1996-2008

[@namelikeanyother885]

I see you're arbitrarily excluding Chinese sites

[@HMOX-ld5dk]

google great top 1

[@Great_Fenix]

Я не удивлён что википедия умирает. В инете можно найти много других сайтов по нужному вопросу и старая неудобная веб энциклопедия уходит в прошлое

[@timur2371]

В чем заключается ее неудобство?

[@lagillas]

no CRYPTO website anywhere

[@Clay_Figurine_Legend_Share]

Google从1997之后就崛起了，从此一骑绝尘。

[@b-music9329]

2006 MySpace still was number 4 in the web - unbelievable! Completely vanished

[@cheungting9577]

Wow bing beat adult content

[@unquenchable_fire]

0:36

[@MohamedMokhtar]

Where is TikTok?

[@PhilMasters]

Not on the Web as such, much.

[@RealAyzeNZ]

All the adult websites can't be included here

[@OfflineMortz]

They can! Its just a name no content of the website!!

[@mattwolf7698]

Phub was included.

[@wwftroy22]

AOL is Hated by me

[@mucizekartal]

07:38 Baba geliyor babaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ıkdfhıoudhuıofghsdfgohdfıghfdguıodfhıguıofd

[@unquenchable_fire]

2:06

[@unquenchable_fire]

8:51

[@CYRAX86]

гугл монополисты!!

[@vork93180]

FALTOU ORKUT E TIKTOK

[@Cactu6]

Еаа

[@kiran9s]

Downvoted for the video being an apple fanboy

[@paulbohlaender0941]

Twitter -> X ❤

[@eelkewestra9487]

yahoo went fucking yahoo

[@kavicska]

Hi! I would like to make similiar video for my familiy, I prepare my data but I don't what software can make video like this. Could some help me?

[@TheHunter2]

check the most visited website shown in the video for that ;)

[@unquenchable_fire]

1:48

[@paulo.17]

A ver si se va al carajo facebook que vuelva tuenti

[@beatjunkybg]

It Watsapp a website now?

[@devaraanimation]

Whatsapp web exist

[@ortegaperu8510]

Twitter is called X now! Why didn't you mention Elon Musks take over of Twitter ?