2021 is here and website owners of all kinds – bloggers, marketers, companies, and ecommerce owners – are gearing up for a brand new year in hopes of making it the most successful yet.
This article is a summary of some of the most interesting 🌐 internet statistics for 2021.
I find it helpful to share what are seemingly the most important statistics and facts about the online world with anyone who wants to know.
This post was originally published in 2018 and has been updated to include the latest internet stats for 2021.
Internet Statistics & Facts
Online Advertising Statistics & Facts
Blogging Statistics & Facts
Domain Name Statistics & Facts
Web Hosting Statistics & Facts
Ecommerce & Conversion Stats & Facts
Mobile Internet Statistics & Facts
Social Media Statistics & Facts
Internet Security Statistics & Facts
Summary & References
Internet Statistics & Facts
Collection of internet statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- As of January 2021, there were 4,783,503,852 (4.7+ billion) internet users.
- The average internet user spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online every day.
- As of January 2021, there were over 1.83 billion websites on the Internet.
- Ecommerce sales is expected to reach $4.9 trillion worth of sales in 2021.
As of January 2, 2021, there were were 4,783,503,852 (4.7+ billion) internet users spanning the globe. This is compared to the 3.42 billion users recorded at the end of 2016.
The average internet user spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online every day. That’s more than 100 days online this year.
Asia continues the trend of having the most internet users in the world, though the percentage has dropped from 49.7% to 49.0%. Runners up include Europe (16.8%), Africa (11%), and Latin America/Caribbean (10.4%).
Interestingly, North America makes up only 8.2% of all worldwide internet users.
In Asia, China reigns supreme when it comes to having the most active internet users. With 818,934,000 users, the next closest countries include the United States with 320,059,368, Russia with 109,552,842, and Latin America/Caribbean with 18,526,199 users.
There are 326,474,013 people in the United States, and nearly double that using the internet in China, which has a population of 1,415,045,928.
North America has the highest penetration rate with 88.1% of its people using the internet. This is followed by Europe (85.2%), Australia/Oceania (68.9%), and Latin America/Caribbean (67.2%).
How many websites are there in 2021? As of January 2nd 2021, there were over 1.83 billion websites on the Internet. info.cern.ch was the first-ever website on the Internet, published on August 6, 1991.
The world averages an internet penetration rate of 55.1% (as compared to 35% in 2013).
Surprisingly, the Falkland Islands and Iceland have the highest worldwide penetration rates 99.3% of 99.0% respectively, though their small populations 2,919 and 337,780 make high penetration rates easier to achieve.
Google now processes over 7 billion search queries every day worldwide (though some say it could be as high as 10 billion per day). 15% of those queries have never been searched for on Google before.
56% of all internet traffic is from an automated source such as hacking tools, scrapers and spammers, impersonators, and bots.
Google Chrome reigns supreme amongst users with 61.77% web browser dominance. Other popular internet browsers rank as follows – Safari (15.09%), Firefox (4.92%), Opera (3.15%), and Internet Explorer (2.81%)
Approximately 40% of the world’s population had an internet connection in 2018. In 1995, it was less than 1%.
More people access the internet on a mobile device than they do on a desktop computer. In 2020, the mobile internet usage was 53.3%.
How many domain names are there in 2021? In Q3 2020 there were 370.7 million domain name registered across all top-level domains (TLDs).
.COM is the top-level domain (TLD) with the most registrations in Q3 2020, 150.3M .COM registrations followed by .TK (Turkey) 27.5M and .CN (China) at 24.7M registrations.
51.8% of all traffic on the Internet comes from bots. Only 48.2% of internet traffic comes from humans
Online Advertising Statistics & Facts
Collection of online advertising and internet marketing statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- 51%, or more than $240 billion dollars, of all ad money spent globally will be digital media based.
- 63% of all search ads will be mobile based.
Digital media is expected to generate 51%, or over $240 billion dollars, of all ad money spent globally.
Search advertisements are the most popular type of digital advertisement right now, with marketers boosting expenditure in 2018 by 12% to reach $113 billion spent.
63% of all search ads will be mobile based in 2019, reaching $28.25 billion spent.
Mobile video ads are changing. For example, Snapchat is expected to release a feature where users can swipe left for friends’ snaps and right for editorial content, so marketers can get involved and offer ads.
TV ads are expected to bring in a 2.5% increase in revenue this upcoming year, despite past drops – topping out at around $183 billion.
Facebook ad revenue is expected to jump 32.1%, while advertisers are expected to spend 14.8% more with Google ads.
Blogging Statistics & Facts
Collection of blogging statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- More than 5,760,000 blog posts are published on the Internet every single day.
- There are over 600 million blogs in the world in 2020
- 6.7 million people regularly publish blog posts.
How many blog posts are published every day in 2021? More than 5,760,000 blog posts are published on the Internet every single day.
There are over 600 million blogs in the world in 2020. In the US, in 2020, there are 1.7 million blog owners
Long form blog posts generate 9x more leads than short form posts.
The most popular content marketing strategies include – blogging (65%), social media (65%), and case studies (64%). Adding to that, 78% of B2B buyers use case studies when researching purchases, followed by white papers, webinars, e-books, and third-party analysis reports.
Blogging continues to be the number one marketing strategy for companies (according to 45% of marketers polled).
6.7 million people publish posts on a blogging website regularly, with 12 million posting blogs to their social media.
81% of online consumers trust information found on blogs. In fact, 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.
75% of people never scroll past the first page in search results and 80% of people ignore Google ads, despite the jump Google ads are expected to see this upcoming year.
There are over 7 billion searches on Google every day. 15% of searches are new, have never been searched for before.
The average word count of high ranking content in Google is between 1,140 and 1,285 words.
Domain Name Statistics & Facts
Collection of domain name statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- Globally there are 370.7 million domain name registered.
- Cars.com is the highest selling domain name ever recorded, it sold for $872 million.
In Q3 2020 there were 20 million new domain names registered, which is a 4% increase from the previous quarter.
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of 157.4 million domain name registrations this year.
An increase of 200,000 country-code top-level domain name registrations, or a 0.1% increase, this past year. The highest ranking were .cn – China, .tk – Tokelau, .de – Germany, uk – United Kingdom, and .ru – Russia Federation.
In total, there are approximately 370.7 million domain name registrations worldwide, and that number is now increasing steadily by approximately 1.0% each year.
The top five most popular domain name extensions are currently: .com (150.3 million), .cn (24.7 million), .tk (27.5 million), .de (16.6 million), and .net (13.4 million).
Cars.com is the highest selling domain name ever recorded. It went for a whopping $872 million.
Yahoo.com, Google.com, Facebook.com, Youtube.com, and Live.com rule the domain world.
Niche sites have over 1000 domain names extensions to choose from thanks to site over saturation.
GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar, as of December 2018 49.98% of all domain names were registered with them.
Web Hosting Statistics & Facts
Collection of web hosting statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- 40% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
- 34.5% of all websites on the Internet are powered by the WordPress content management system.
- The world’s first website was published on August 6, 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee.
As of January 2nd, 2021, there were 1,826,089,359 websites, up from 906,616,188 in January 2016.
The world’s first website was published on August 6, 1991 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee.
The most popular content management systems (CMS) include – WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, with WordPress dominating, having a market share of 60.4%.
39.3% of all websites on the Internet are powered by WordPress, the open source content management system.
51.3% of all websites on the Internet don’t use a content management system.
50% of websites today are hosted on either Apache or Nginx, both free to use open source web servers.
The most prominent sites using WordPress are The New York Times, Forbes, and Facebook Blog.
2021 expects WP Engine (review here), Kinsta (review here), Hostinger (review here), SiteGround (review here), Bluehost (review here), SiteGround vs Bluehost, and GreenGeeks (review here) to be the best hosting providers on the market.
Half a billion dollars is lost each year because of slow websites, with conversion rates dropping 7% as a result. This can be prevented using a reliable web hosting company.
40% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. And 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance say they’re less likely to purchase from the same site again.
Squarespace, Wix and Weebly are the most popular website builders to create a site. However according to builtwith.com sites created by a website builder only makes up 5.6% of the top 1 millions sites on the Internet.
Ecommerce Statistics & Facts
Collection of ecommerce statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- Ecommerce sales is expected to reach $4.9 trillion worth of sales in 2021.
- Amazon is responsible for more than 49% of all online sales and about 5% of all sales in the United States.
A one second delay in page loading speed can cost you 7% of your ecommerce conversions.
Sites on the first page of Google search results have an average page load speed of less than 2000 milliseconds.
According to Pingdom, the fastest website to date is bhphotovideo.com, followed by hm.com and bestbuy.com, all of which have page loading speeds of under 0.5 second.
Ecommerce sales reached $2.29 trillion in 2017 and is expected to reach $4.9 trillion worth of sales in 2021.
Global online retail sales are growing and are estimated to reach 8.8% of total retail spending. The UK has the highest recorded ecommerce sales, followed by China, Norway, Finland, and South Korea.
47.3% of world population is expected to buy online in 2020.
Online grocery shopping will reach $100 billion by 2025, grabbing 20% of the total grocery market.
Despite mobile use increase, desktop sales continue to reign supreme.
One in four people will continue to shop online at least once a week, and yet only 28% of U.S. small businesses are selling their products online.
71% of shoppers believe they will get a better deal online than in stores.
28% of online shoppers will abandon their cart if the shipping costs are too high.
In 2019, it was estimated that there would be 224 million digital shoppers in the United States alone.
Using product videos can increase product purchases by an impressive 144%.
47% of all online orders include free shipping.
Online shoppers will spend 30% more per order when free shipping is included.
While the majority of smartphone and tablet owners (68%) have attempted to make a purchase on their device, two-thirds (66%) failed to complete a transaction due to obstacles encountered during checkout.
Cart abandonment accounts for $18 billion in lost sales every year.
The abandonment rate for mobile shopping carts is 97% compared to 70-75% for desktop carts.
The top reasons for cart abandonment include – shipping costs too high, not ready to purchase, not qualifying for free shipping, shipping costs shown too late in the purchase process, and websites loading too slowly.
The average B2B buyer is under the age of 35.
71% of all buyers start with generic unbranded searches.
Mobile checkout options are increasing since 84% of people have at least one concern with data breaches and online shopping.
Shopify (review here) powers over 1 million merchants and have generated over $155 billion in sales, and it’s the 3rd largest online retailer in the United States. after Amazon and eBay.
Last year 174 million Americans who shopped between Black Friday and Cyber Monday spent an average of $335 per person.
It is estimated that 1.92 billion people are expected to buy something online.
Amazon is responsible for more than 49% of all online sales and about 5% of all retail sales in the United States.
80% of North American adults use ad-blocking. If nothing is done to address ad-blocking, it’s estimated that by 2020 it will cost businesses $75 billion annually.
Videos are expected to account for 80% of all traffic on the Internet.
Mobile Internet Statistics & Facts
Collection of mobile internet statistics and facts for 2021
Key takeaways:
- In 2020 more than 5.19 billion people now use mobile phones, with user numbers up by 124 million (2.4%) year over year.
- Mobile devices account for more than half of all the time we spend online, its share of internet time is 50.1%.
- 80% of all internet users own a mobile phone.
Google makes up a staggering 32.4% of total mobile ad expenditure, with Facebook a close second with 24.6%.
About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices, with a 25% more likelihood of being opened with a personalized subject line.
91% of people in the United Arab Emirates access the internet on their phone, followed by Singapore at 88% and Saudi Arabia at 86%. The United States is only at 57% of people accessing the internet via a mobile device.
As of March 2019, 80% of top Alexa websites were mobile friendly.
70% of mobile users report disliking mobile ads, despite their continued use by businesses.
80% of all internet users own a mobile phone.
People spend 89% of their mobile media time on apps and the other 11% spent on websites.
Tablets have the highest add-to-cart rate on ecommerce sites at 8.58%.
American adults are expected to spend on average 3 hours and 35 minutes on mobile devices.
Mobile traffic has overtaken desktop, 48.2% of all online traffic comes from mobile and tablet devices.
Mobile ecommerce is expected to generate $2.32 trillion in sales.
Social Media Statistics & Facts
Collection of social media statistics and facts for 2020
Key takeaways:
- Worldwide there are 2.77 billion social media users.
- Facebook currently has 2.27 billion users, and Instagram has 1 billion users.
It is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017.
81% of marketers found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing.
Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3X more than any other type of content.
The average attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds, this year the average attention span is just 8 seconds. That is less than the 9 second attention span of your average goldfish.
B2B audiences largely prefer LinkedIn (82%), Twitter (66%), YouTube (64%), Facebook (41%), and SlideShare (38%) as their preferred social media platforms.
71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.
Facebook shows the most powerful social media ecommerce statistics, sending a massive 60% of all ecommerce referrals for last year.
Facebook currently has 2.27 billion users.
Twitter currently has 336 million monthly active users.
Instagram has 1 billion users.
LinkedIn has 500 million users.
People spend an average of 2 hours and 15 minutes per day on social media networks.
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are the top messaging services, with over 50% of internet users using one or the other.
Snapchat usage is highest amongst the Gen Z population (38% regularly use it).
Over 400 million people use Instagram Stories each month.
Over 2 billion messages are exchanged between brands and users each month, with 45.8% of people saying they would rather contact a business through messaging than email.
Over 90% of marketers who employ an influencer marketing strategy in social media believe it is successful.
Internet Security Statistics & Facts
Collection of internet security statistics and facts for 2020
Key takeaways:
- The cost of cybercrime damages will cost up to $6 trillion annually by 2021.
- 1 out of every 131 emails contain dangerous malware such as ransomware and phishing attacks.
- The most hacked CMS is WordPress, making up over 90% of all hacking attempts.
73% of cyberattacks are carried out for economic reason
Cost of cybercrime damages will cost $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion just a year ago
Cost of ransomware is predicted to exceed $5 billion. Up from $325 million in 2015, which is a 15X increase in just two years
4,000 ransomware attacks take place every single day
Ransomware attacks have fallen nearly 30% this year with cryptominers infections increasing 44.5%
The average amount demanded after a ransomware attack is $1,077
Globally, cybercrime is the second most reported cyber security crime
1 in every 131 emails contain a malware
93% of data breaches happen within minutes, and 83% aren’t discovered for weeks
The largest ever data breach happened in 2013 when 3 billion Yahoo users phone numbers, birth dates, and security questions, were hacked
Weak or stolen passwords is the most common tactic among cybercriminals. 81% of cyber attacks are based on weak or stolen passwords
Over 40% of cyber crime attacks target small businesses
Summary
The internet is always changing. This means that the type of content you create, your marketing strategies, the way people interact with their mobile devices, how consumers make online purchases, and the ways in which people search for information, are also in a constant state of change.
I have worked tirelessly to create this comprehensive list of Internet trends and internet usage statistics that is meant to help guide you through 2021 so that you can attract, convert, and retain customers and loyal followers like never before.
Reference these internet statistics and facts as you like, and feel free to share them on social networks.
References
- http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/
- https://www.census.gov/popclock/
- http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/269329/penetration-rate-of-the-internet-by-region/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/global-advertising-spend-2020-online-and-offline-ad-spend-to-be-equal.html
- https://www.brightedge.com/resources/research-reports/mobile-first-57-traffic-now-mobile
- http://www.adweek.com/digital/u-s-digital-advertising-will-make-83-billion-this-year-says-emarketer/
- https://www.snapapp.com/blog/54-content-marketing-stats-guide-your-2018-strategy
- https://writtent.com/blog/top-blogging-statistics-45-reasons-to-blog/
- https://blog.verisign.com/domain-names/verisign-q3-2019-domain-name-industry-brief-internet-grows-to-359-8-million-domain-name-registrations-in-the-third-quarter-of-2019
- https://www.godaddy.com/garage/the-top-20-most-expensive-domain-names/
- https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/39899/000003989915000006/gci-20141228x10k.htm
- http://tekeye.uk/computing/how-many-websites-are-there
- https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424725,00.asp
- https://websitehostinginsider.com/web-hosting-industry-stats/
- https://www.tibus.com/blog/web-hosting-facts-and-statistics-that-show-the-importance-of-choosing-the-right-web-host/
- https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking
- https://marketingland.com/e-commerce-sales-reach-105-7-billion-q1-2017-214974
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/
- https://www.invespcro.com/blog/global-online-retail-spending-statistics-and-trends/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/experience-design/mobile-page-speed-load-time/
- https://founderu.selz.com/40-online-shopping-ecommerce-statistics-know/
- http://10ecommercetrends.com/
- https://10under100.com/#stats
- https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/mobile-marketing-statistics
- https://boldcontentvideo.com/2017/12/06/social-media-statistics-for-2018/
- https://www.statista.com/chart/9086/daily-active-users-instagram-stories-snapchat/
- http://www.verizonenterprise.com/verizon-insights-lab/dbir/2017/
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3110467/security/cybercrime-damages-expected-to-cost-the-world-6-trillion-by-2021.html
- http://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-5-billion/
- https://responsiveprocess.com/data/
- https://www.symantec.com/security-center/threat-report
- http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/forensics/economic-crime-survey/cybercrime.html
- http://www.verizonenterprise.com/resources/reports/rp_dbir-2016-executive-summary_xg_en.pdf
- https://www.businessinsider.com.au/yahoo-email-account-hacked-three-billion-what-need-to-do-2017-10
- https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/adaptive-defense/most-common-tactics-among-cybercriminals/
- https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/cyber-security-statistics-small-business.html
- https://www.aumcore.com/blog/2017/10/06/mobile-marketing-statistics-for-2018/
- https://blog.barkly.com/ransomware-statistics-2018
am so glad seeing this here… very useful facts and well designed content.
Interesting facts
THANK YOU for such an excellent source of actual numbers
Thanks Lindsay,
Stats about WordPress are crazy, I wonder what is the reason that despite being hacked so much people still insist on WordPress. Wonder what is the reason for this loyalty. Valuable stats! Looking forward for more about App usage etc. Cheers!
Hi Barbara Armour!
Thank you so much for stopping by! And thank you for your kind words 🙂
I’ll tell you, I did some research regarding your question about active websites in the United States, and honestly I found that it is nearly impossible to determine this! There is not really a lot of hard data regarding active sites in general, let alone data that fits your specific criteria. And, I found that there is a ton of conflicting data too, making it hard to discern what is accurate.
That said, I can offer you some crude estimates to give you an idea and hope (fingers crossed) that I am at least close.
From the data I found, there seems to be a total (active and inactive) of 1.6 billion websites in the world as of October 2018. With that, 1.2 billion websites are thought to be INACTIVE (crazy right?!). That leaves us with approximately .4 billion (or 400 million) active websites in the world.
Now, I saw an fact somewhere that said that the United States holds onto approximately 45-50% of all active websites in the world, so based on all of this data, it would seem there are about 200 million active websites in the United States alone.
This does not, however, answer your specific question regarding what you feel is considered an active website (10K sessions per month for at least 12 months) because quite frankly, there is no data about this that I can find.
I hope this helps, it’s the best I can do! Thanks again for stopping by.
~ Lindsay
WOW Thnk you so much !!!! Lindsay, you did a wonderful job on these stats. So…. I was wondering if you could help me on this question:
How many ACTIVE websites ( Active defined as: Have had at least 10K session on average per month for the last for 12 months per month) are in the USA?
These facts and figures are astonishing. I cannot believe how much the Internet is used. There are just so many websites and so much data. I never would have guessed that 56% of all internet traffic is from automated sources such as hacking tools, scrapers or spammers, impersonators, and bots.
Hi !
I love these stats! I’d love to also see what the sources are as well. Thanks for the hard work!
Hi Suzanna Ing!
Thank you so much for your kind words, you really made my day! I am happy to know you found the information useful and that you’ll be back for more. That’s what my main goal is!
~ Lindsay
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I seriously enjoyed reading it, you happen to be a great author. I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will eventually come back later on. I want to encourage yourself to continue your great job, have a nice day!
Hi Mejbahul Alam!
I am so glad you found this useful!
~Lindsay
Never thought like this that gathering 100 posts make a huge resource. I just like this also want to thank you for your great work.
Really cool and interesting facts!
Hi Steven!
You are so welcome, I’m glad you found this useful! I know I am always on the hunt for the latest stats and want actual numbers too…and not numbers from years ago either. Good luck to you and your team, I wish you all the success in the world!
Make sure to come back and see what other great content we have in store for you 🙂
~ Lindsay
Super useful, really great, THANK YOU for such an excellent source of actually numbers! I’m training/updating my team’s foundation information – starting here.