Which website did TikTok surpass as the world’s most popular website for 2021? The answer is Google.
Cloudflare’s 2021 Year in Review ranked TikTok.com as the world’s most popular domain, ahead of Google.com. TikTok had ranked seventh in Cloudflare’s 2020 list, while Google had held the top position, making the change a striking measure of TikTok’s rapid growth during the pandemic era.
The ranking reflected Cloudflare’s analysis of internet traffic patterns, including data from its 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver. It did not mean that TikTok had more unique users than Google, nor that people had stopped using Google’s search, Maps, YouTube and other services. Instead, it measured domain popularity according to Cloudflare’s methodology.
TikTok’s rise was driven by its personalized short-video feed, creator ecosystem and unusually strong engagement. In the same ranking, it also overtook Facebook as the leading social-media domain. The common mix-up is to treat the result as a permanent global ranking; it described Cloudflare’s 2021 domain ranking, not every possible measure of website popularity.