The Web unpacked: a quantitative analysis of global Web usage

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed quantitative analysis of global web usage, revealing traffic concentration among top websites and dominant content categories, based on data from over 250,000 sites.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive quantitative assessment of global web traffic distribution and characteristics using a large-scale dataset from SimilarWeb.

Findings

Top 116 domains account for about one-third of web traffic

Search engines and social media are primary traffic attractors

Traffic is highly concentrated on US-owned and free-for-profit websites

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of global web usage patterns based on data from SimilarWeb, a leading source for estimating web traffic. Leveraging a dataset comprising over 250,000 websites, we estimate the total web traffic and investigate its distribution among domains and industry sectors. We detail the characteristics of the top 116 domains, which comprise an estimated one-third of all web traffic. Our analysis scrutinizes various attributes of these domains, including their content sources and types, access requirements, offline presence, and ownership features. Our analysis reveals a significant concentration of web traffic, with a diminutive number of top websites capturing the majority of visits. Search engines, news and media, social networks, streaming, and adult content emerge as primary attractors of web traffic, which is also highly concentrated on platforms and USA-owned websites. Much of the traffic goes to for-profit but mostly free-of-charge websites, highlighting the dominance of business models not based on paywalls.