PARIS, Oct 17 — The internet is full of websites and applications of all kinds. And from France to Japan and Yemen, each country has its own preferences when it comes to usage. Here’s a look at the most popular sites around the world.

Hostinger, an online hosting site, has investigated which websites are the most visited in every country in the world, excluding sites like Google, Facebook and YouTube, which would have dominated the results. In 2021, a study conducted by Zyro found that people spent 213.2 billion hours per year on Google, 142.6 billion on YouTube and 44.6 billion on Facebook.

Removing these three giants, it is the Wikipedia website that leads the way as the most visited site in 43 different countries, especially in Europe. In fact, Wikipedia is the most popular site in 15 of the 38 European countries studied. Thanks to availability in different languages, the site is also very popular in South America, Australia and the Middle East.

In the UK, it is the BBC website that leads the way. And, more globally, the BBC was found to be the most visited news site in 12 countries. Meanwhile, in Russia and Belarus, it is VK, the Russian version of Facebook, that tops the list. In the Philippines and New Zealand, people are most glued to Reddit. As for streaming sites, Netflix comes first only in Sierra Leone.

In the United States, Amazon is the most-visited website, with 2.66 billion visits per year. And Jeff Bezos’s site took advantage of the pandemic to boost its visitor numbers even more. In Canada, Reddit is the leader, while Twitter is preferred in Mexico and Jamaica, as well as in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Across Africa, the top websites are Wikipedia, sports information site Koora, Twitter and Amazon.

When it comes to the most-visited fashion sites, the Shein brand leads the way, taking first place in 26 countries.

Data was collected in June 2022 and excludes illegal streaming sites, pornographic sites, online gambling and illegal downloads. Note that China does not feature in this research. — ETX Studio