ISTANBUL

Internet users spend the most time on YouTube, according to figures compiled by Anadolu Agency.

As Saturday marks 31 years since the internet's first website came online, Google was found to be the most-visited website with 47.8 billion, according to US-based search engine marketing company Semrush.

However, this was not always the case over the past roughly three decades after the first-ever website, which was made by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee and contained information on the World Wide Web project, went public on Aug. 6, 1991.

The website started functioning on Dec. 20, 1990. But at the time, it was only accessible from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

In 2001, the most popular websites were MSN, Yahoo, and eBay, though the first two would lose their spots to Yahoo and Google by 2007.

Other popular websites at that time, such as Myspace and AOL, have disappeared over time.

Google, Facebook, and YouTube were ranked as the most popular websites in 2012.

There are currently around 2 billion websites. After Google, YouTube tops the list in popularity with 46.8 billion visits, followed by Facebook with 10.6 billion, Wikipedia with 5.8 billion, and Twitter with 4.8 billion.

On the other hand, according to website traffic tracker Similarweb, YouTube is the website on which users spend the most time -- around 22 minutes per visit. It is followed by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

According to data by Statista, there were 5 billion active internet users, which is over 60% of the world population, as of April 2022. Of those, 93% are also on social media.

* Written by Ahmet Gencturk in Ankara