Google.com continues to dominate the digital landscape, ranking as the most linked-to website worldwide with 468,745 referring subnets as of December 2024. Facebook.com follows closely in second place with 470,479 referring subnets, while YouTube.com ranked third with 417,827.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

In November 2024, Google.com was the most popular website worldwide with 136 billion average monthly visits. The online platform has held the top spot as the most popular website since June 2010, when it pulled ahead of Yahoo into first place. Second-ranked YouTube generated more than 72.8 billion monthly visits in the measured period. The internet leaders: search, social, and e-commerce Social networks, search engines, and e-commerce websites shape the online experience as we know it. While Google leads the global online search market by far, YouTube and Facebook have become the world’s most popular websites for user generated content, solidifying Alphabet’s and Meta’s leadership over the online landscape. Meanwhile, websites such as Amazon and eBay generate millions in profits from the sale and distribution of goods, making the e-market sector an integral part of the global retail scene. What is next for online content? Powering social media and websites like Reddit and Wikipedia, user-generated content keeps moving the internet’s engines. However, the rise of generative artificial intelligence will bring significant changes to how online content is produced and handled. ChatGPT is already transforming how online search is performed, and news of Google's 2024 deal for licensing Reddit content to train large language models (LLMs) signal that the internet is likely to go through a new revolution. While AI's impact on the online market might bring both opportunities and challenges, effective content management will remain crucial for profitability on the web.

Explore the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 below. Trusted worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, the list ranks 2,092 institutions from 115 countries and territories.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 include 1,907 universities across 108 countries and regions. The table is based on a new methodology, which includes 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

In November 2024, Google.com was the most popular website worldwide with approximately 6.25 billion unique monthly visitors. YouTube.com was ranked second with an estimated 3.64 billion unique monthly visitors. Both websites are among the most visited websites worldwide.

The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) is a classification of academic and research-related institutions ranked by a composite indicator that combines three different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact measured by their web visibility. It provides a friendly interface that allows the visualization of any customized ranking from the combination of these three sets of indicators. Additionally, it is possible to compare the trends for individual indicators of up to six institutions. For each large sector it is also possible to obtain distribution charts of the different indicators. For comparative purposes, the value of the composite indicator has been set on a scale of 0 to 100. However the line graphs and bar graphs always represent ranks (lower is better, so the highest values are the worst).

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 include more than 1,500 universities across 93 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Using four metrics—**Authority Score, Referring Domains, Citation Flow, and Trust Flow**—with an equal weight of 25%, SCImago constructs an overall indicator that reflects media websites’ digital reputation. The results define their relative position in the ranking and permit a comparison of digital development and leadership.

☢️❓The entire dataset is obtained from public and open-access data of SCImago Media Rankings

In May 2020, YouTube generated over 5.3 billion global visits via organic search traffic. Second-ranked Wikipedia accumulated less than half of that, claiming 2.2 billion organic search visits. Social network Facebook rounded off the top properties with more than a billion organic search visits during the measured period.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016-2017 list the 980 top universities in the world, making it our biggest international league table to date. It is the only global university performance table to judge world class universities across all of their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Designed and produced by the World Wide Web Foundation, the Web Index is the world’s first measure of the World Wide Web’s contribution to social, economic and political progress in countries across the world. http://thewebindex.org/about/ Scores are given in the areas of universal access; freedom and openness; relevant content; and empowerment. First released in 2012, the 2014-15 Index has been expanded and refined to include a total of 86 countries and features an enhanced data set, particularly in the areas of gender, Open Data, privacy rights and censorship. The Index combines existing secondary data with new primary data derived from an evidence-based expert assessment survey. The Web Index provides an objective and robust evidence base to inform public dialogue on the steps needed for societies to leverage greater value from the Web. It is published annually and resources permitting, it will continue to be expanded to cover more countries in the coming years. It will eventually allow for comparisons of trends over time and the benchmarking of performance across countries, continuously improving our understanding of the Web’s value for humanity.

The average for 2024 based on 175 countries was 5.42 index points. The highest value was in Iran: 10 index points and the lowest value was in Iceland: 0.2 index points. The indicator is available from 2007 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Context

A listing of the top 1-million websites according to Alexa.com.

Content

Rank and Site name

Acknowledgements

Fork from: https://github.com/mozilla/cipherscan/tree/master/top1m

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 includes almost 1,400 universities across 92 countries, standing as the largest and most diverse university rankings ever to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with more than one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the third quarter of 2023, Facebook reported around four billion monthly core Family product users. The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms Most top ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ or video sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin’s popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network: a little app called TikTok. How many people use social media? The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2025, social networking sites are estimated to reach 5.42 billion users and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Service Protocol: Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Application Profile: Web Browser. Link Function: information

From April 2022 to January 2024, the ************************************************* saw an average of approximately ** million visits, ranking as the most popular education site worldwide. ********, which offers classes and certifications on various subjects, saw ** million visits from global users in the examined period. ********************************************** for students and teachers, ranked third with ***** million visits recorded on average between April 2022 and the beginning of 2024.

The global Corporate Website Ranking Solutions market is projected to reach a valuation of approximately USD 15.8 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2% from 2025 to 2033.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 include more than 1,600 universities across 99 countries and territories, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.