TikTok is actually unstoppable: The video-sharing platform simply pushed Google apart to develop into the preferred web site on this planet, in accordance with internet efficiency and safety firm Cloudflare’s 2021 Year in Review web visitors rankings.

TikTok cracked Cloudflare’s record of prime 10 websites final yr, coming in at seventh in recognition behind the .coms for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix and Amazon. For 2021, the order of that record is essentially unchanged—Amazon jumped up one slot, switching locations with Netflix—other than TikTok’s surge to the highest.

In a weblog publish, Cloudflare famous that evaluating the numbers between the 2 years may yield probably deceptive outcomes, for the reason that service solely culled information from September to December in 2020 (in comparison with all 12 months being accounted for in 2021). According to Cloudflare, TikTok first peaked within the international visitors rankings on Feb. 17, 2021, adopted by a number of extra days in March and June after which, lastly, a extra everlasting keep on the prime starting in late August.

The app’s recognition has surged throughout the pandemic; whereas it initially attracted a teenaged viewers set on coordinating lip sync and dance movies, TikTok has since piqued the curiosity of customers of all ages and demographics, who flock to the app for its cooking hacks, memes, and spirituality content material, to call only a few matters.

While Cloudflare is just providing up the uncooked information right here and declines to offer any evaluation of the developments, it appears telling that TikTok—nonetheless a relative newcomer in 2020—shot to the highest to decisively beat out Google.com and all of its ancillary providers, together with Maps, Translate, Photos, Flights, Books, News, and others. It’s additionally noteworthy that TikTok—whose guardian firm, ByteDance, is predicated in China—is now the one non-American website to occupy a slot within the prime 10.

TikTok’s surge in recognition has not gone unnoticed amongst advertisers: On the identical day Cloudflare launched its record of rankings, the New York Times reported that retailers now see the platform as a “holy grail of marketing,” as they search to succeed in coveted influencers and Gen Z eyeballs amid cable tv’s continued decline in recognition. According to the Times, investing in advert house on TikTok appears to have been a protected wager, with the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag now having been considered greater than 7 billion instances on the app.

“The growth that we’ve seen is insane,” Krishna Subramanian, a founding father of the influencer advertising agency Captiv8, informed the Times. “Brands have moved from just testing out TikTok to making it a budget line item or creating dedicated campaigns for TikTok specifically.”