• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 22, 2021

TikTok took the title of the most popular website in 2021 -- surpassing only Google, according to data released Wednesday.

The Cloudflare ranking dramatically shifted from the previous year when TikTok ranked No. 8 and Google ranked No. 1, Cloudflare reported. 

For the rankings, Cloudflare focused on internet traffic for specific domains -- everything from space exploration and ecommerce to social media and video streaming, which gained the highest ranking at the height of the pandemic lockdowns.

The company also analyzes internet traffic for chat domains, less established metaverse domains, and others.

TikTok took the top spot for a few days between February, March and May of this year, but after August 10, it took the lead for most days. By October and November, TikTok took the lead on most days, including on Thanksgiving, and Black Friday.

The most popular domains overall in 2021

1. TikTok.com
2. Google.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Microsoft.com
5. Apple.com
6. Amazon.com
7. Netflix.com
8. YouTube.com
9. Twitter.com
10. WhatsApp.com

TikTok also took the No. 1 spot for the most popular social sites in 2021, knocking Facebook to No. 2. This should mean TikTok generated more Internet traffic.

Cloudflare ranks the sites using public data from its DNS resolver 1.1.1.1, so it's not related to the number of unique users or visitors it gets per month.

The most popular social media domains in 2021

1. TikTok.com
2. Facebook.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Twitter.com
5. Instagram.com
6. Snapchat.com
7. Reddit.com
8. Pinterest.com
9. LinkedIn.com
10. Quora.com

The Facebook outage on October 4, 2021, had an impact on the company’s position in Cloudflare’s ranking, leading to it losing the No. 3 position (it was No. 4) for seven days in a row in that week. The number of days at No. 4 was something that never happened since September 2020 to Facebook.

Cloudflare also ranked the most popular streaming video sites. New companies emerged this year in the space, but Netflix remains undefeated.

YouTube got added to the list this year. Amazon Prime is not included because the streaming service uses Amazon as a domain.

The most video streaming domains in 2021

1. Netflix.com
2. YouTube.com
3. Roku.com
4. HBOMax.com
5. Hulu.com
6. Peacocktv.com
7. Disneyplus.co
8. ParamountPlus.com
9. Sling.com
10. Iq.com

The most popular ecommerce domains in 2021

1. Amazon.com
2. Taobao.com
3. Ebay.com
4. Walmart.com
5. Jd.com
6. Shopify.com
7. Bestbuy.com
8. Target.com
9. Rakuten.co.jp
10. Homedepot.com