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 YouTube
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 YouTube
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?