The 20 most popular websites where computer users spend their time

Living life on the www is nothing new for most of us these days, and we all have our favorite web hangouts.  But where is the rest of the world residing when it comes to fan-favorite websites?  Well, it turns out that there are 20 popular sites where users worldwide spend the most time.

Spreadsheet experts at Productivity Spot analyzed web traffic data from SimilarWeb for more than 1,000 of the most popular websites worldwide, to find which sites people are spending the most time on. Each website was ranked according to an index, which considered the number of monthly visitors, the amount of time each user stays on the site, the number of pages each user views, its accessibility score, as well as the bounce rate – the percentage of users who click off after the first page. 

YouTube was revealed as the website that people spend the most time on, with an index score of 65.56 out of 100. YouTube was found to clock in a staggering 33.57 billion visits per month, making it the second most visited website in the world behind Google. An impressive 1.97 billion visits each month were found to be from unique users, which equates to every person visiting the site 17 times per month on average. YouTube also had one of the longest visit durations of any website, with users spending 20 minutes and 22 seconds on average per session.

YouTube was second only to Google, which came out on top with a score of 72.75 out of 100.  Google has a staggering 3.19 billion unique users per month, however each user spends a comparatively shorter 10 minutes 37 seconds on the search engine per visit.

Facebook ranked third overall behind Google and YouTube, with an overall score of 62.07 out of 100. The social media platform generates 17.2 billion monthly visits per month on average, with 1.49 billion being visits from individual users. Users were found to spend approximately 10 minutes 36 seconds per visit to the site, and typically viewed 8.65 pages of content per visit.

Placing fourth is Wikipedia with a score of 62.07 out of 100. The online encyclopedia generates 4.41 billion visits per month across its user-generated subpages. Users spend an average of 3 minutes 53 seconds on the site per visit, a significantly lower duration than that of Google, YouTube and Facebook.  Wikipedia’s bounce rate reveals that more than half (59.6%) of all visitors left the site after viewing just one page – presumably after finding the information they were searching for.

Rounding off the top five is Instagram with a score of 59.95 out of 100. Around 6.68 billion monthly visits are made to  the media sharing site each month from approximately 1.11 billion unique users. Users spent around 8 minutes 17 seconds on the site, excluding time spent in app.

Making up the remainder of the top ten are X (Twitter), Whatsapp, Yahoo, Amazon and Discord.

Jim Markus, Director at Productivity Spot commented on the study saying:

“Looking at how long users spend on a website is a useful metric for gauging how engaging it is, but it doesn’t tell you the full story if the site doesn’t receive a lot of visitors. We felt it prudent to consider other factors within our index, such as monthly web traffic and bounce rate, to ensure that the findings were more representative of the sites we spend the most time on.

“YouTube seems to have captured our attention the most, with the average user spending more than 20 minutes watching content and browsing the platform each time they visit. The average duration of a YouTube video is estimated to be 4 minutes 24 seconds, meaning that each user is watching 4.6 videos on average per desktop visit.

“Surprisingly, TikTok failed to break the top twenty, ranking 60th overall, which could be due to most users browsing TikTok using the app rather than web-based or mobile browsers. Despite the app’s addictive nature, users were found to spend a surprisingly brief 3 minutes and 47 seconds on the site, when visiting from a browser.” 

The 20 websites that people spend the most time on (worldwide):

Rank	Website domain	Average monthly visitors	Average user time spent on site per visit	Average number of pages per visit	Bounce rate (% of users who leave the site after viewing one page)	Overall Index Score (/100)
1.	google.com	85,415,619,910	10 min 37 sec	8.65	28.6%	72.75
2.	youtube.com	33,566,951,384	20 min 22 sec	11.62	21.4%	65.56
3.	facebook.com	17,204,451,350	10 min 36 sec	8.65	31.2%	62.07
4.	wikipedia.org	4,412,305,474	3 min 53 sec	3.12	59.6%	61.34
5.	instagram.com	6,675,144,647	8 min 17 sec	10.95	35.0%	59.95
6.	twitter.com	6,481,476,151	10 min 42 sec	10.00	32.2%	58.82
7.	whatsapp.com	2,986,133,305	19 min 14 sec	1.72	42.5%	55.82
8.	yahoo.com	3,646,227,921	9 min 25 sec	5.34	34.1%	55.43
9.	amazon.com	2,457,851,071	7 min 16 sec	9.55	34.2%	55.38
10.	discord.com	1,149,883,929	6 min 49 sec	7.28	51.3%	54.26
11.	openai.com	1,542,674,584	4 min 23 sec	4.35	43.2%	53.60
12.	samsung.com	1,228,465,567	2 min 34 sec	2.46	53.2%	52.93
13.	reddit.com	1,791,850,227	8 min 32 sec	6.71	38.6%	52.61
14.	bbc.com	528,722,887	3 min 1 sec	2.46	59.2%	52.15
15.	linkedin.com	1,737,924,497	7 min 34 sec	7.79	24.6%	52.13
16.	microsoft.com	834,063,757	4 min 12 sec	3.82	46.1%	51.62
17.	live.com	2,032,991,634	8 min 6 sec	8.43	19.8%	51.44
18.	cnn.com	604,328,059	3 min 5 sec	2.35	56.4%	51.11
19.	apple.com	460,100,871	2 min 47 sec	3.20	55.0%	50.61
20.	netflix.com	1,492,255,261	5 min 37 sec	4.39	34.2%	50.57

Methodology: 1,009 websites were included in the study, with Adult websites excluded from this seed list. An index was created to give each website a score out of 100, based on the average visit duration, number of pages each user visits, the bounce rate, the current number of monthly visits and each site’s accessibility score. 

(Sources:  Productivity Spot /  Productivity Spot)
(Cover photo, Image credit: Twitter)

Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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