Web trends: a data snapshot spanning 4 years
- 7 months ago
- 3 min read
The web is in constant change marked by new domains being registered or existing ones being discontinued as well as new websites being launched and others going offline. This persistent flux of websites means the web is actually not growing that much, rather the overall size is relatively stable. However, the way websites are created, who is hosting them, and the tools website owners use to create their sites are changing.
Consider how websites needed to be built 20 years ago, with long lines of code and now you can use out of the box templates of AI and your website is built without you having to write a single line of code. In this blog post we’ll take a look at how things have changed over the past four years. Has there been a change in the popularity of certain top-level domains, the use of different content management tools, hosting providers and more?
For this post, we analyzed all websites that were added in the first week of March in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. We’ll look at which top-level domains were registered the most, what types of websites went online, who was hosting them, and what content management systems were chosen. We’ll also take a look at how social media profile mentions have changed over the years.
Top-level domain
For top 5 TLDs not much has changed with .online, .org, .net and .xyz always appearing between rank 2 and 6. Unsurprisingly, .com ranks first in all four years. Its total market share in each year ranges from 47% (2024) to 62% (2022). The biggest winner according to this data is .shop, which climbed from position 45 to 2 in just four years. Interestingly, .store started on rank 9 in 2021 and has remained relatively stable, ranking 8 in 2024. .xyz and .info have slipped down a few ranks but remain among the top TLDs.
Content management systems
WordPress has been the top ranking CMS for years and our data shows a consistent share between 46% (2024) and 49% (2022). The second most popular CMS has been WIX which has lost a little every year, while GoDaddy Website Builder shows a steady growth. Squarespace has increased its market share from 4% to 11% from 2023 to 2024.
Hosting providers
Websites need to be hosted somewhere and in a previous blog post, we showed how much the hosting industry has changed over the past years. Therefore, it’s no surprise that we see quite some movement with Amazon entering strong in 2022 and taking over a quarter of the hosting market. Cloudflare is also gradually gaining as is Hostinger International, while Namecheap has been losing to the competition. Google grew its share between 2021 and 2022 but has since remained relatively stable.
Social media
Lastly, we’ll have a look at how many of the websites we discovered in the first week of March of each year, which mention a social media profile associated with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Each year the proportion of websites that mention these social media platforms decreases.
Between 2021 and 2024 the share of websites that mention Facebook nearly halved, in comparison LinkedIn has maintained a relatively stable share across those four years, even though its overall share is relatively low ranging from 1.7% (2023) to 2.3% (2021).
Here, we took a snapshot of websites that were created in the first week of March in four consecutive years. The dominance of .com as the TLD of choice remains unchallenged, while the rise of .shop is noteworthy. WordPress maintains its position as the leading CMS, but there is movement among the smaller CMS providers. In the hosting sector, Amazon has emerged as a major player, while the mention of traditional social media platforms on websites has seen a steady decline, with LinkedIn being the most stable. These trends underscore the dynamic nature of the web, where some aspects remain constant, others evolve gradually, and some undergo rapid transformation.
