
The most popular web sites every year since 1996 - brandonhall
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/12/15/from-lycos-to-ask-jeeves-to-facebook-tracking-the-20-most-popular-web-sites-every-year-since-1996/
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macNchz
Glam Media? #7 in 2013, on the list since 2008. Never heard of them, and I'm
struggling to figure out what their deal is. Seems they've recently raised a
series _G_ round of funding, and have an array of web properties that I can't
really find a list of, the primary ones being
[http://www.glam.com](http://www.glam.com) and
[http://www.brash.com](http://www.brash.com), which are shockingly useless
marketing vehicles that I really can't believe anyone would visit on a regular
basis. Anyone have any insight?

~~~
fjarlq
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_Media](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_Media)

~~~
macNchz
Not an especially informative wikipedia page as it mostly discusses the
company's accomplishments with a bit of a PR flavor. No list of their 'over
4000 blogs and lifestyle websites'. Per the wiki, they've raised over $300
million in venture capital and get hundreds of millions of unique
visitors...but it just surprises me that I hadn't heard of them and all the
info about them just reads like marketing babble.

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afro88
I'm genuinely surprised that Yahoo tops Google in 2013 and 2010. Especially
considering Android, Gmail etc. proliferation on top of it's domination of
search

~~~
vidarh
On top of their long list of Yahoo branded services, consider that they own
Tumblr and Flickr.

And Gmail is not nearly as dominant outside of the tech industry as it is
within. There are many markets where Gmail is beaten by one or more of
Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL.

~~~
wuliwong
This is supposed to be a list of the top "websites". A visit to tumblr.com or
to flickr.com should not be counted for yahoo.com. I think the title of the
article is probably not accurate.

~~~
nostrademons
The article says that it's based on comScore, which groups all properties
owned by one company under that company. So really "top web companies."

~~~
js-coder
Still really surprising for me. I would've thought Google search alone would
easily outperform all of Yahoo. And then Google also has YouTube, GMail, Maps
etc.

~~~
nostrademons
I think the comScore data may be biased; IIRC they rely on a toolbar that's
installed along with crapware, and so it'll be biased toward users who are
willing to put up with crapware.

~~~
shawndumas
Google Display Network Ad Planner rates Yahoo 3rd [1] (but does not count
itself but does include YouTube so ...)

\---- [1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

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meritt
This data is from comScore. Their data source is a panel of users with their
toolbar installed. It's shit, to say the least.

~~~
dbenhur
ComScore data is collected from panels with self-selection bias, but also
incorporating significant statistical correction based on random selection
panels and demographic data.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComScore#Data_collection_and_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComScore#Data_collection_and_reporting)

------
briholt
It's not clear from the graphic or the article, but the list of top "sites" is
actually the top _networks_ \- showing all of the network's sites' traffic is
aggregated together. So "Fox" represents traffic from IGN.com and Myspace.com
as well.

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chrislgrigg
When I started looking through this, I wondered if any of the early-2000s
adware platforms would make an appearance... and there it was! Gator at #17 in
2001. I was working at the tech bench at Best Buy in high school and removal
of it and the other adware apps of that era must have been 75% of my job.

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angersock
I'm rather surprised--which is to say, calling bullshit--that no porn sites
(any of the $TUBE network) shows up on this.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Probably because most of the data comes from comScore who, like Alexa, gets
their data from a self-selected sample size. We're ever going to get truly
accurate results this way.

Of course, I'm sure if the NSA put its mind to it (not happening), they could
get a fairly accurate readout of the most popular sites for the US...

~~~
angersock
I wonder how you'd collect that...log every DNS lookup at the ISP level?
Surely they already do this.

~~~
pkhagah
Probably count tcp/http connection to sites at ISP? Of course it's not easy or
accurate for us. Not NSA ;)

Another option for conspiracy theorists is to just get data from apache logs
etc., because, you know, NSA has access to everything.

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zhte415
Tencent, Baidu? This seems to ignore obvious big players.

~~~
listic
Though probably most exhaustive (which other metric will measure Web stats
from Feb. 1996 on?) it looks _very_ US-centric in my view. While US=World in
terms on internet coverage early on, it is certainly not true now, and will
become ever more untrue in the future.

This list certainly ignores _many_ 'elefants in the room'; those who try to
rely solely on it for high-level overview of development of the internet, will
have a distorted view. I won't bother listing the others because my view is
biased, too, and I'll obviously won't think of many.

Just FYI: Russian Liveinternet counter, unique daily visitors:
[http://www.liveinternet.ru/rating/index.html?lang=en](http://www.liveinternet.ru/rating/index.html?lang=en)

~~~
wuliwong
Elephant #1 is that google.com is clearly #1 and facebook.com is #2. No way
yahoo.com is above them in 2013.

~~~
mmanfrin
It's not google.com, facebook.com, and yahoo.com; it's Google, Facebook, and
Yahoo. The companies have many different properties.

~~~
dmix
This comment will have to be repeated on this thread about 50x before people
realize this.

But I guess you could blame ComScore or Washington Post for not making it
obvious.

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noblethrasher
Now we just need a list of the most popular _Internet applications_ of the
last 10 - 15 years. I suspect that the web is still the largest non-
proprietary application (perhaps followed by email), but it would be nice to
see how it compares to the others.

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lpsz
Surprised to see Ask still on the list. I haven't personally browsed there
since maybe y2k. Not to be facetious, but I imagine a whole segment of users
unaware of Google (or DDG, or another sensible modern alternative) and still
relying on Ask.

~~~
josefresco
The "Ask" toolbar is bundled with a lot of crapware. Could explain the
inflated numbers. I doubt any Ask users don't know of Google - more like they
don't know how to switch, or don't need/want to.

~~~
Kurtz79
It it was so it wouldn't be a big problem, but in reality it is bundled even
with supposedly respectable software:

[https://www.change.org/p/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-
as...](https://www.change.org/p/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-ask-toolbar-
with-the-java-installer)

I'm always suprised when I open a browser of some collegues/friends with even
moderate computer literacy and see the amount of crap they let automatic
installers shovel into their PCs, and how they are mostly not bothered by it.

~~~
desdiv
I _really_ don't understand why Oracle, a company that rakes in almost $40
billion a year, is begging for pocket change from Ask Jeeves. Someone please
explain this to me.

~~~
dummyfellow
It is there since Sun days, which wasn't raking anything. Also as a division,
Java makes almost no revenue.

------
BobMarz
CBS, Turner, Weather Co, Comcast NBC, and Gannett are all solidly old media.
NBC and CBS got started with radio broadcasts in the 20s! Who says old media
can't adapt?

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muglug
Weird that they don't lump together IAC/InterActiveCorp's properties (inc.
Ask, Answers & About)

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yc1010
Delighted to see Ebay losing out to Amazon, their terrible site design/layout
+ all sorts of Paypal horror stories must have driven millions of users away

~~~
ryandvm
As far as innovation is concerned, Ebay and Amazon are two of the most polar
opposite companies on the web.

Amazon started as an online book store. They now sell consumer products,
media, tablets, payment services, computing services, content production,
logistics, supply services, drone deliveries, etc.

On the other hand, Ebay started as an online auction site. Since then, they
have... bought the payment processor that most of their customers used.

The only other category leader that has possibly been more stagnant than Ebay
is Craigslist.

~~~
imanaccount247
Craigslist at least didn't make huge efforts to lower the quality of their
site over the years. Ebay went from useful to garbage almost entirely by
choice.

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dpweb
I remember first seeing a Yahoo TV commercial. Was like, Yahoo is big enough
to have a TV commercial?!!

~~~
sp332
Yahoo owns $34B of Ali Baba, which is doing crazy well right now and taking
Yahoo up with it.

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gpvos
_> Mostly, however, the list is garbage nonsense like “GNN” and “Teleport,”
which we don’t even know what they are._

Funny. Just before opening the page I was thinking about how high GNN would
feature on the list. The web site is actually still the first entry on the
Wikipedia GNN page.

~~~
notahacker
That sentence from the article is - on several levels - a sad reflection on
the "garbage nonsense" standards of drafting and editing within the clickbait-
generating arm of the Washington Post.

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ozh
WTF is doing AOL in the top list nowadays? Genuine question.

~~~
organsnyder
Huffington Post

~~~
Igglyboo
TechCrunch

~~~
wlesieutre
Engadget

~~~
ozh
I must be seriously underestimating the pageviews of those websites then :)

~~~
adventured
AOL.com is still a top ~100 property in the US. Not sure why, maybe sponsored
starting homepages, people checking old email accounts, etc.

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snarfy
I don't buy it. MSN.com? Really? It looks like IE users that never changed the
default home page. That doesn't mean the website is popular.

~~~
peter303
Lots of sites have subcontracted Bing search and Bing maps. They would point
back to MSN.

------
nickhalfasleep
In some ways this is deceptive in a smartphone world, if you consider all the
networked Apps that also vie for "connected" screen time.

~~~
lukejduncan
App actions can still count as "pageviews" in a comscore world. I'm not
entirely sure of the specifics but I've heard of it being reported.

------
thebosz
Way back in 1996, our ISP was named Teleport.

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flurpitude
Yahoo the most popular, AOL 5th and Glam Media 7th in 2013? There's something
fishy about these rankings.

~~~
valarauca1
Yahoo owns Tumblr and Flickr as well as its core company doing fine.

AOL owns Tech Crunch and Huffington post.. As well as their core business
remains profitable (2.3 billion in revenue last year).

Google is only largely popular with the <30 age demo and the tech centric
crowd. You have to remember your social circle isn't always representative of
the country.

~~~
bshimmin
Google search is so popular it's a verb amongst almost any age group, at least
in the west.

I'm still struggling to believe that Yahoo beats Google even with this
somewhat nebulous "web properties" definition. Does Yahoo.com (including, say,
news and weather?) + Tumblr + Flickr really get more traffic than Google.com +
Google Maps + YouTube?

~~~
shawndumas
ComScore's numbers reflect unique visitors and not visits.

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baurigae
Ach, Lycos! From Lycos, to Facebook.

The perspective is welcome, and reassuring. Fake, probably. But that's your
washingtonpost.com

Thanks!

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dm03514
internet porn was centralized enough in 1996 to be only year that it made top
20??

~~~
josefresco
Possibly. I would guess however that it's more of a problem with how data is
reported. Here's what comScore has to say about their methodology:

"This approach (comScore) combines person-level measurement from the 2 million
person comScore global panel with census informed tonnage of consumption to
account for 100 percent of a property's audience."

[https://www.google.com/search?q=comscore+methodology](https://www.google.com/search?q=comscore+methodology)

------
Thaxll
This list is completely bias, there is no way that Facebook is behind
Microsoft in 2013.

Something that looks more real:

[http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US](http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US)

~~~
megaman22
Bing is behind the german version of Google globally...

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mda
Just shows how terrible comscore is at measuring.

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fmitchell0
i'm confused. what/why is gannett (in 2013)?

~~~
justignore
Gannett is a large media holding company. They own/license a number of news
stations, but more importantly, own USA Today.

~~~
listic
Do they count visitors to their actual website? I think not.

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biomimic
Search is still #1.

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newsreporter
agreed completely.

~~~
freshyill
Fascinating.

