33 Most Visited Websites in the World (2024)

Like many other people, I visit a few websites regularly, some more often than others. Amazon, Bing, YouTube, Reddit, and Instagram round out my top five — but many more go beyond my American bubble and have greater significance than I originally thought.

If you’re like me and have ever wondered what the world’s most popular sites are, I’ve got you covered. In deciding the 33 most visited websites in the world, I carefully chose the top websites with the greatest number of visitors between October and December 2023.

You may have never heard of some of the sites on this list, whereas others are age-old favorites. But I won’t keep you guessing. Without further ado, let’s dive in and find out what the most visited websites in the world are today.

Google takes the lead as the most visited website globally, with approximately 1 trillion annual visits, which equals about 84 billion monthly visits.¹ Google was founded in 1998 primarily as a search engine, but over the years, it’s evolved into a conglomerate of digital services and technological innovation.²

The company has released products including Google Nest, a security camera, and Google Pixel, a smartphone. Some of its services include Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, Google Docs Editors, Google Sites, Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Cloud. It accounts for about 83% of the global desktop search engine market.³

YouTube, the world’s leading video-sharing and streaming website, takes the cake for the second-most visited websites, with around 900 billion annual visits.¹ Some popular YouTube video types include commentary, product reviews, tutorials, best-of lists, and comedy.⁴

YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former employees of PayPal. In 2016, Google bought the video-sharing service for $1.65 billion.⁵ YouTube offers a Premium subscription, which lets you watch videos without ads. YouTube generated $11 billion in revenue from its Premium subscription service.⁶

Most of us know the origin story of Facebook: It was created in 2004 as a social networking site for Harvard University students before eventually including all students from universities across the US. In 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address.⁷

By 2009, Facebook surpassed the once-popular social networking platform, MySpace, as the most prominent social networking platform.⁸ Today, Facebook is owned by Meta and gets about 128 billion annual visits with 2.8 billion active users.^1,9

Pornhub.com takes the win for the most popular online adult entertainment platform in the world, bringing in more than 120 billion visits per year with an average of around 10 billion visits per month.¹ Pornhub.com was founded in 2007 as part of the company Interhub.

Today, Pornhub.com has a very active community. More than 75 million people have it bookmarked in their Favorites bar.¹⁰ It also runs the Sexual Wellness Center, which is an online resource for sexual health and wellness. Clinical psychologist Dr. Laurie Betito works closely with the program to offer free, accessible information on love, sexuality, and health.¹¹

X, colloquially known as Twitter, is another popular social media site with nearly 77 billion annual visits, equal to 6 billion visits per month, more or less.¹² It has 368 million active monthly users.¹³

Twitter was founded in 2006, but in 2023, owner Elon Musk rebranded to X, intending to become an app that can serve several purposes. (Or as Elon put it: “X, the everything app.”¹⁴) Trending categories include news, entertainment, sports, politics, pop culture, and lifestyle.¹⁵

Wikipedia was created in 2001, and more than 20 years later still serves as the top-ranking educational site in the world, with 54 billion annual visits.¹⁶ In 2023, some of Wikipedia’s most popular articles were: ChatGPT, deaths in 2023, the 2023 Cricket World Cup, the Indian Premier League, and “Oppenheimer.”¹⁷

Wikipedia is maintained by volunteers and has nearly 7 million articles in English alone.¹⁸ It is an ad-free, registration-free, openly collaborative online information platform where anyone can contribute or edit articles. Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization, and has raised more than $180 million from users worldwide in 2023 alone.¹⁹

Baidu is the largest search engine website in China, the most populous country in the world. It offers services and search engine features similar to those offered by Google and was created for Chinese users.²⁰ Baidu receives 80 billion annual visits from around 218 million daily users, far exceeding its population of 1.3 billion.²¹

Baidu was founded in 2000 and is one of the world’s most innovative tech leaders, focusing on advancing artificial intelligence (AI).²² Around 95% of Baidu traffic comes from China. Taiwan (1.2%), Hong Kong (1.06%), the US (1%), and Japan (0.5%) make up the rest of the most notable traffic.²³

Reddit.com is an American social news and discussion website with more than 20 billion annual visits.²⁴ Reddit is a great place to find like-minded people on just about any topic — from literature, memes, pop culture, music, and everything in between. Whether you want to read current news or voice an opinion on your favorite podcast, Reddit is the place to go.

Approximately 48% of Redditors who are desktop users are in the US, 7% in the UK, 7% in Canada, 4% in Australia, and 3% in Germany.²⁵ Some of its most popular subreddits, or themed discussion boards and communities, are r/funny, r/AskReddit, r/gaming, r/aww, and r/worldnews.²⁶

With around 54 billion annual visits yearly, Instagram’s popularity is sneaking up on Reddit.²⁷ Instagram, which is owned by Meta, is the world’s most popular social networking service, with around 6 billion monthly visits. It has more than 1.3 billion active users.²⁸

Instagram was created in 2010. In 2012, Meta, the company behind Facebook, bought it for $1 billion.²⁹ Some of Instagram’s most popular accounts include Instagram, Cristiano Ronaldo, Leo Messi, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner, Dwayne Johnson, and Ariana Grande.³⁰

The World Wide Web was released in 1994, and a few months later, Yahoo’s search engine was launched.³² Yahoo has been around for nearly 30 years, with its introduction known as “Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web.” It is now considered one of the early web pioneers, hosting one of the first online encyclopedias and search engines.³¹

Although Yahoo’s numbers have dwindled over the past decade, it’s still going strong. It boasts around 48 billion annual visits, mainly for its news outlet, particularly in finance.³³ Today, Yahoo provides a web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including My Yahoo!, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and its advertising platform, Yahoo! Native.

XNXX.com is an adult entertainment website that brings in more than 6 billion webpage visits per year, featuring adult videos, stories, pictures, and forums, generating approximately 490 million monthly visits.³⁴ XNXX is headquartered in Paris, France, and is owned by WGCZ Holding. It brings in nearly $25 million in revenue annually and is most popular among French audiences.³⁵

Docomo is the official website for NTT Docomo, a Japanese telecommunications company specializing in phone and internet services. The website also has a portal site for smartphones called d-menu, which has interesting content, including news, apps, books, music, and even fortune-telling. Docomo brings in around 41 billion annual visits or 1.38 billion monthly visits.³⁶ NTT Docomo has brought in more than 15.2 trillion Japanese yen in revenue with nearly 83 million subscribers.³⁷

Yandex.ru is Russia’s most popular search engine, with a market share of more than 50% and 40 billion annual visitors.³³ But in 2022, Yandex.ru became Dzen.ru, so Yandex.ru now redirects to Dzen.ru. Yandex, or Dzen, offers a variety of internet-related products, including web portals, online advertising, eCommerce, and cloud computing.³⁸ This search engine is often called the “Google of Russia” because of its similar business model, products, and popularity.

What better way to know the weather than with Weather.com? Weather.com brought in approximately 39 billion annual visits, with more than 3 billion monthly visits.³⁹ Weather.com is owned by The Weather Company, a subsidiary of IBM. Weather.com is considered the most accurate forecaster, up to 3.5x more accurate than many other weather providers.^40,41

WhatsApp is an end-to-end encrypted instant messaging platform that allows you to connect your phone number without sharing it with anyone else. Instead, you get a unique code provided by WhatsApp. It has more than 2 billion users worldwide and brings in around 35 billion annual website visits.¹ It’s the most popular messaging service in approximately 180 countries, including Kenya, Brazil, and Argentina, although it’s recently gaining more traction in the US.^42,43

XVideos.com is owned by WGCZ Holding and was founded in 2007. It currently ranks as one of the most-visited adult entertainment websites in the world, coming in far ahead of other popular websites, like Pornhub.com and XNXX. The site is known for its amateur community-uploaded videos, which garner 18 billion website visits (nearly 3 billion monthly visitors). ⁸⁶

Amazon is the world’s most popular eCommerce marketplace, with 26 billion annual visits, averaging 2 billion monthly visits.⁴⁴ Amazon’s subscription service, Prime, which guarantees free two-day shipping and access to lightning deals, brought in $8.6 billion in revenue in 2023. By 2024, it’s projected that nearly 86% of American households will have an Amazon Prime subscription.⁴⁵

Yahoo.co.jp is Japan’s version of Yahoo, a joint venture with the SoftBank Group and the American Yahoo company.⁴⁶ The company is the second-largest search engine used in Japan as of July 2021, with a market share of 19% behind Google’s 77%.⁴⁷ It brings in around 24 billion annual visits, reigning as the most popular news and media website in Japan.⁴⁸

Live.com belongs to Microsoft and is the home base for Microsoft’s Outlook email and OneDrive products. It currently brings in around 23 billion annual visits, with more than 400 million active email account users.⁵⁰ Some of Live.com’s biggest competitors include Microsoft.com, Google.com, Office.com, and Bing.com.^49/

OpenAI.com gets more than 20 billion annual visits or 1.7 billion monthly visitors.⁵¹ OpenAI rose to popularity in 2022 when it released its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in November and reached more than 100 million users by January 2023.⁵² Fewer people have been engaging with it since then, likely due to other generative AI platforms becoming popular, including Claude by Anthrophic, Llama 2 by Meta, Bing by Microsoft, and Bard by Google.^53,54

LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals, allowing them to connect with other professionals, share tips and opinions, post and apply for jobs, and generally enhance their professional reputation by interacting with others and sharing their expertise and resumés. LinkedIn has more than 900 million members and 19 billion annual visits.⁵⁵ Some of LinkedIn’s most popular hashtags are #India, #Innovation, #Management, #HumanResources, and #DigitalMarketing.⁵⁶

At this point, the only way you’ve never heard of TikTok is if you’ve been living under a proverbial social media rock. At #7, TikTok has an average of 3.7 billion monthly visits, equating to around 44 billion annual visits.⁵⁷ By the end of 2024, TikTok is expected to have more than 2 billion monthly visitors.⁵⁸ Some of the most popular TikTok content includes dance videos, lip-syncing, comedy skits, and do-it-yourself (DIY) tutorials.⁸⁷

Netflix, the video-streaming service chock-full of original content and popular movies and series, boasts 17 billion annual visits and 209 million active members.^59,60 It is the monolith that single-handedly took down Blockbuster, which officially filed for bankruptcy in 2010.⁶¹ (Today, only one Blockbuster store is in Bend, Oregon.⁶²) Some of Netflix’s all-time top-ranking material include “Stranger Things,” “Bridgerton,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Red Notice,” “Don’t Look Up,” and “Bird Box.”^63,64

Office.com is another Microsoft-owned website, but the platform isn’t called Microsoft Office anymore — it was rebranded to Microsoft 365 in 2020 but is colloquially still called Microsoft Office by many users. Microsoft 365 is a suite of cloud-based productivity tools that brings in about 17 billion annual visits and serves as the main hub for all of Microsoft’s products, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Teams, and OneDrive.⁶⁵

Google.com may have 83% of the market share, but Bing is the world’s second-most popular search engine tool, with 9% of the market share and 16 billion annual visits.^3,66 Bing.com is owned by Microsoft and skyrocketed in popularity around 2021. Some people prefer Bing over Google for its AI assistant and the quality of search results, which sometimes outshine the billions of search results on Google. Yahoo! Search also uses Bing to power its search results.⁶⁷

Globo.com is the largest mass media group in Latin America and was founded in 1925 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.⁶⁸ Globo is a massive company that acts as a catch-all for everything news and entertainment-related, including television, radio, internet, satellite, newspapers, magazines, and music in Latin America. It gets approximately 15 billion annual visits with nearly 103 million users.^69,70 Globo.com is the most popular in Brazil.⁷¹

Naver.com is a South Korean online platform launched in 1999 as the first web portal in South Korea to develop and use its own search engine. As of 2017, Naver.com accounted for nearly 75% of all web searches in South Korea.⁷² Naver.com gets more than 1 billion monthly visits, reaching approximately 14 billion annual visits.⁷³ Some of its services and products include Mail, Cafe (a neighborhood community page), Blog, Shopping, News, Stock, and Real Estate.

Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone is the best-known phone in the world, so it makes sense that Samsung.com lands on the list of the most visited websites with 13 billion annual visits.^74,75 Samsung is also one of the world’s largest producers of electronic devices, including appliances, memory chips, semiconductors, integrated systems, and digital media devices like smartphones and tablets. Samsung currently has around 1.033 billion users.⁷⁶

When you visit DuckDuckGo.com, the first thing you’ll see is: “Tired of being tracked online? We can help.” This is because DuckDuckGo is primarily known as a search engine but is also a software company that protects privacy online.⁷⁷ It is constantly praised for its privacy and security features, accompanying its search engine and browser, but it also offers email and app tracking protection. DuckDuckGo brings in about 9 billion annual visitors.¹

Pinterest is an American image-sharing and social media website that allows users to save and discover information or ideas. Pinterest users can create pinboards to save these ideas and sort them by category. It has approximately 433 million monthly active users, which equates to around 5 billion annual visits.⁷⁸ Some of the most popular Pinterest categories include food and drink, tattoos, design, history, and health and fitness.⁷⁹

AliExpress is an eCommerce platform that sells very inexpensive products compared to Amazon and similar sites with cheap shipping and easy refunds. Alibaba, a Chinese multinational company, owns it. The most popular categories include fashion, electronics, and furniture. But over the years, there have been issues with long shipping times and bootlegged items.⁸⁰ Even so, AliExpress.com brings in 5 billion visits each year.⁸¹

Bilibili is a video-sharing website based in Shanghai, China, where users can submit, view, and add overlay commentary on videos. Some popular video categories include anime, music, dance, technology, movies, fashion, and video games. It’s also well known within the Chinese community for its kuso videos, including parodies and campy content. Bilibili.com has more than 333 million active users, bringing in approximately 4 billion visits annually.⁸²

Max, formerly HBO Max, is a popular streaming service featuring HBO series, movies, and other Warner Bros. content. As of 2021, it had more than 12.1 million subscribers, including commercial hotels.⁸³ It currently brings in approximately 2 billion visits each year, and some of the all-time top-ranking content includes “Chernobyl,” “Band of Brothers,” and “The Wire.”^84,85

To generate a comprehensive list, I compared the top-ranking websites on SimilarWeb and SEMrush from October to December 2023, identifying the initial set of approximately the top 20 sites. I complemented this data with additional data from Statista.

The process involved multiplying the average monthly traffic by 12 months to estimate the annual visits for a more thorough approximation of annual visitors for each site. Please note this data is approximate and may change month-to-month.