YouTube is about to surpass Facebook as the second most visited website in the US, according to a new study. The video streaming platform is set to overtake Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild within the next two to three months, thanks to a steady decline in Facebook’s web traffic.
The site has seen traffic nearly halve in the past two years, whereas YouTube’s is climbing, according to a new study published by CNBC from market research firm SimilarWeb. From vlogging to reviews and beyond, YouTube is brimming with free, quality content – in an age of monthly subscription fees, it’s not hard to see the appeal.
READ NEXT: YouTube tightens rules over monetised videos
Meanwhile, the study revealed that Facebook’s monthly page visits had tumbled from 8.5 billion to 4.7 billion in the past two years. The company’s recent maelstrom of bad PR (see: Cambridge Analytica, Holocaust deniers and the 2016 US presidential election) might have left the site’s traffic in the lurch, as users are anxious about how their data is being used.
READ NEXT: How to see everything Facebook knows about you
What’s more, although Facebook has seen a marked increase in app usage, it’s not sufficient to make up for the loss in web traffic. I wouldn’t go shedding a tear for the demise of Facebook, however; the company has a host of other assets in its portfolio, including titanic platforms Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meanwhile, the study revealed that Google resides comfortably in first place, leagues above its runner-ups. July 2018 saw 15 billion visits to Google – that’s three times as many as the other four websites in the shortlist, each of which had visits totalling under five billion.
Joining Google, YouTube and Facebook in the top five most visited US websites, are Yahoo and Amazon. Surprisingly, Yahoo has retained a higher volume of traffic than ecommerce giant Amazon, although the latter is expected to supersede the former as the fourth most visited website in the US within the next few months. Traffic spikes were notable for Amazon in the commercial build up to Christmas last year, along with July 2018, when Amazon Prime Day saw £3 billion spent in just 36 hours.
READ NEXT: The uncomfortable truth about sexism in tech
What a time to be alive. Or rather, what a time to be a technology titan. With Jeff Bezos worth a cool $150 billion (£117 billion) and Elon Musk talking about an $82 billion (£63 billion) purchase of Tesla, these modern-day moguls are looking more unstoppable than ever. Here’s hoping that one day it won’t just be sites led by White Male Tech Bosses that are topping the charts.
Lead image: Andrew Perry, used under Creative Commons
Disclaimer: Some pages on this site may include an affiliate link. This does not effect our editorial in any way.
