Google and Facebook top the most visited websites of 2011

By Ryan Fleming Published December 29, 2011

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The internet is not a contest. It is not a matter of who has the most visitors, or what the top 10 sites in the world are at the end of each year. With that being said, here are the 10 websites that won the internet this year, according to a report from Nielsen.

Nielsen’s list focuses exclusively on the top sites in the U.S., and for the most part, the results aren’t all that surprising. Seeing Google atop the list is expected, and Facebook’s second place finish is no real surprise either. And while these results are specific to American traffic, they are also representative of the world.

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After that though, the results between America and the global totals begin to differ slightly, especially when you add in the traffic coming from China.

According to Alexa.com, the top 10 websites in the world are:

1) Google

2) Facebook

3) YouTube

4) Yahoo

5) Baidu

6) Wikipedia

7) Windows Live

8) Blogspot

9) Amazon

10) Twitter

China’s online properties have shown incredible growth beyond just the country’s search engine giant Baidu. QQ, China’s top service portal comes in at number 11, while Taobao.com, a Chinese retailer similar to Amazon, lands at number 12.

But if there were a winner, it would clearly be Google. Google India lands at number 14 on the list, giving the search giant three (including YouTube) of the top 15 online destinations in the world.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…

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