2025 STATE OF THE WEB REPORT
STATE OF THE WEB 2025
Let us take you on a (virtual) trip around the world to evaluate the current state of the web, and the domain and hosting market up until the 2nd quarter of 2025. We’ll examine how the industry has changed over the years, and what the future of the industry might hold.
Global internet use 2025
In 2025, many of us couldn’t imagine our lives without the internet. The internet allows us to communicate with our loved ones, learn and research information, share news, and even earn a living. Here are some top facts about global internet use in 2025:
Global internet use
- More than 68.7% of all people on Earth now use the internet.*
- Internet users have grown by 2.6% over the past year.*
- Global internet users total over 5.64 billion people. *
- 144 million new internet users from April 2024 to April 2025.*
Global mobile device use
- There are 5.81 billion unique mobile phone users worldwide*
- 70.7% of the world’s total population now uses a mobile device.*
- The world’s mobile device of choice is the smartphone, with over 7.2 billion in use globally**
Source: ** https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/uk-internet-usage-statistics-2022 * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
UK internet use in 2025
Internet use
- There were 67.8 million individuals using the internet in the United Kingdom at the start of 2025.*
- The United Kingdom’s internet penetration rate stood at 97.8% of the total population at the start of 2025.*
Internet speed
- The UK’s median fixed internet download speed is currently 123.92 Mbps.*
- The UK’s fixed internet connection increased by 31.76 Mbps (+34.5 percent) in the 12 months leading up to January 2025.*
Mobile internet speed
- The UK’s median mobile internet download speed via cellular data networks is 58.01 Mbps.*
- The median mobile internet download speed in the United Kingdom increased by 9.58 Mbps (+19.8%) in the 12 months to January 2025.*
Source: * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
Global number of users per social media network
| Monthly active users (MAU) | |
|---|---|
| 3.07 billion* | |
| YouTube | 2.7 billion* |
| 2 billion* | |
| 2 billion* | |
| TikTok | 1.6 billion* |
| 1.2 billion** | |
| 1 billion***** | |
| Snapchat | 850 million* |
| X | 611 million**** |
| 570 million*** | |
Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
Web pages and internet searches
- There are more than 1.2 billion sites on the world wide web.*
- The web is said to be made of 4.57 billion pages.**
- Only about 16% of all websites in the world are active and being used in some fashion.*
- 62.8% of time spent on the internet is to find information.***
Source: *https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
The web’s most visited websites
| Most visited websites in the world | |
|---|---|
| 97.2 billion | |
| YouTube | 44.4 billion |
| 9.1 billion | |
| Chat GPT | 5.4 billion |
| 5.3 billion | |
| 4.6 billion | |
| Wikipedia | 4.5 billion |
| X | 3.6 billion |
| Yahoo | 3.3 billion |
| 2.6 billion | |
How green is the internet?
One area which may not be so obvious when it comes to its impact on the environment is our digital activity.
- The average person contributes around 968g of CO2 every single day just by scrolling.*
- The average website produces 1.76g of carbon (CO2) emissions for every page view, which means a site with 100,000 page views a month emits 2,112kg of CO2 emissions every year – the equivalent of an average petrol car being on the road for a year.****
- If the internet were a country, it would be the 4th largest emitter in the world.****
Source: * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
What is a domain name?
A domain name is a unique address used to access websites on the internet. Domain names offer a human-friendly alternative to a website’s IP address, making them much easier to remember. So whilst users search for websites by name, their browsers can still find the specific web server hosting a site via its IP address
Source: * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
Number of active domains
- In 2025, there are 762,401,476 registered domains at the time of writing.*
- The first quarter of 2025 closed with 68.4 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs).**
- There was an increase of 4.2 million domain name registrations, or 1.1% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.**
- Domain name registrations increased by 6.1 million, or 1.7%, year over year.**
Source: * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
How many websites are there?
- 252,000 new websites are created every day
- 10,500 new websites are created every hour
- 175 websites are created every minute
- 3 new websites are created every second
Source: * https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
What is a TLD?
In 1985, The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority released six top-level domain names. These top-level domains (TLDs) became known as domain name extensions and represent the highest level in the system hierarchy. These are:
- .com
- .net
- .edu
- .org
- .mil
- .gov
Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
As of 31st of March 2025, the 10 largest TLDs by number of reported domain names were .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .ru, .nl, .br and .au.
New TLDs launched in 2024
TLDs that reached General Availability (GA)
| New TLDs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .deal | .now | .lifestyle | .living | .music |
| .post | .food | .diy | .vana | |
TLDs to look out for in 2025.
| New TLDs in 2025 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .feedback | .christmas | .loan | .sx | .pink |
| .inu | .lol | .motorcycles | .yachts | .makeup |
What is a ccTLD?
A ccTLD (country-code top-level domain) represents a country code. In order to distinguish one country from another, two-letter domains were established and became associated with countries or geographical locations. If your desired .com domain name is unavailable, consider using a ccTLD like a .uk domain name instead.
Europe
The Americas
Africa
Asia / Middle East
Oceania
Top 10 ccTLDs in Europe
| Pos. | TLD | Country | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .de | Germany | 17.5m |
| 2 | .uk | UK | 10.5m |
| 3 | .ru | Russia | 6.5m |
| 4 | .nl | Netherlands | 6.3m |
| 5 | .fr | France | 4.0m |
| 6 | .eu | European Union | 3.7m |
| 7 | .it | Italy | 3.5m |
| 8 | .ch | Switzerland | 2.5m |
| 9 | .pl | Poland | 2.5m |
| 10 | .es | Spain | 2.1m |
Top 10 ccTLDs in The Americas
| Pos. | TLD | Country | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .br | Brazil | 5.4m |
| 2 | .co | Colombia | 3.4m |
| 3 | .ca | Canada | 3.38m+ |
| 4 | .us | USA | 1.8m+ |
| 5 | .mx | Mexico | 1.0m |
| 6 | .cl | Chile | 708 000 |
| 7 | .ar | Argentina | 637 000 |
| 8 | .ai | Anguilla | 600 000 |
| 9 | .pe | Peru | 572 000 |
| 10 | .ve | Venezuela | 500 000 |
Top 10 ccTLDs in Africa
| Pos. | TLD | Country | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .za | South Africa | 8.7m |
| 2 | .ma | Mali | 649 000 |
| 3 | .ng | Nigeria | 584 000 |
| 4 | .ke | Kenya | 549 000 |
| 5 | .ly | Libya | 188 000 |
| 6 | .tz | Tanzania | 113 000 |
| 7 | .zw | Zimbabwe | 110 000 |
| 8 | .tn | Tunisia | 96 000 |
| 9 | .ug | Uganda | 83 000 |
| 10 | .ao | Angola | 79 000 |
Top 10 ccTLDs in Asia / Middle East
| Pos. | TLD | Country | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .cn | China | 20.1m |
| 2 | .in | India | 4.0m |
| 3 | .tr | Turkey | 2.49m |
| 4 | .jp | Japan | 1.75m |
| 5 | .ir | Iran | 1.16m+ |
| 6 | .kr | South Korea | 1.1m |
| 7 | .id | Indonesia | 0.95m |
| 8 | .ae | UAE | 647 000 |
| 9 | .tw | Taiwan | 600 000 |
| 10 | .il | Israel | 571 000 |
Top 10 ccTLDs in Oceania
| TLD | Country | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .au | Australia | 4.0m+ |
| 2 | .cc | Cocos Islands | 2.0m |
| 3 | .nz | New Zealand | 757 000 |
| 4 | .tv | Tuvalu | 470 000 |
| 5 | .ws | Western Samoa | 400 000 |
| 6 | .nu | Niue | 227 000 |
Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom
ngTLDs and Geo ngTLDs
NgTLDs refer to the small percentage of domains registered which are neither general TLDs such as .com and .net, or country-code TLDs such as .uk or .de.
| Top ngTLDs and Geo ngTLDs | |
|---|---|
| .top | 15.8m |
| .info | 10.8m |
| .xyz | 6.4m |
| .shop | 5.1m |
| .online | 5.0m |
| .club | 4.8m |
| .vip | 4.1m |
| .biz | 3.9m |
| .loan | 2.8m |
| .store | 2.8m |
Source: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/index.xhtml?section=new-gtlds
ngTLDs as percentage of total TLDs (as of Q2 2025)
City TLDs
| City TLD | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .berlin | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | → |
| .tokyo | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | → |
| .hamburg | 3 | 4 | 6 | 40 | 7 | 8 | 3 | ↑ |
| .brussels | 4 | 3 | 11 | 12 | 10 | 12 | 13 | ↓ |
| .koeln | 5 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 10 | 5 | ↓ |
| .amsterdam | 6 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 20 | 6 | → |
| .nyc | 7 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 7 | ↓ |
| .wein | 8 | 13 | 13 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | ↑ |
| .vegas | 9 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 11 | 11 | 4 | ↓ |
| .gent | 10 | 14 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 10 | ↑ |
Source: https://dotzon.consulting/studien/digitale-stadtmarken-2025/
Fasthosts growing industries and domain trends
Here’s a breakdown of some of the fastest-growing industries and our predictions of their associated domain name trends in 2025:
AI
- .ai
- .ml (machine learning)
- .llm
Tech
- .cloud
- .tech
Political
- .io
Biotechnology
- .bio
- .life
- .science
- .med
Health & Wellness
- .health
- .wellness
- .care
- .doctor
- .fitness
- .clinic
Gambling
- .bet
- .casino
- .games
- .bingo
- .vegas.casino
Finance and Cryptocurrencies
- .finance
- .bank
- .crypto
Sustainability & Eco
- .earth
- .eco
- .green
- .energy
Ecommerce
- .store
- .shop
- .sale
- .online
Entertainment and media
- .live
- .studio
- .fm
- .media
The rise of AI internet
The way people use the internet and search for information is evolving, with AI-powered search engines now part of everyday life. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) are shifting the landscape from search queries to natural language prompts.
Top AI search engines (by market share)
| AI search engines and market share | |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 15.8m |
| Microsoft Copilot | 10.8m |
| Google Gemini | 6.4m |
| Perplexity | 5.1m |
| Claude AI | 5.0m |
| Grok | 4.8m |
| Deepseek | 4.1m |
| Brave Leo AI | 3.9m |
| Komo | 2.8m |
| Andi | 2.8m |
Source: https://firstpagesage.com/reports/top-generative-ai-chatbots/
AI search traffic trends
- As of 2025, ChatGPT is currently the market leader with the most comprehensive feature set.**
- ChatGPT currently has an average of 122.58 million monthly active visitors.*
- ChatGPT processes over 1 billion queries per day.*
- According to Semrush projections, AI search traffic is expected to surpass traditional organic search traffic by 2028.***
- Half of ChatGPT links point to business/Service sites.***
Source: * https://firstpagesage.com/reports/top-generative-ai-chatbots/
How people use chatbots
Changes to search in 2025
- Websites will see lower click-through rates (CTRs), and website visibility will increasingly rely on schema markups, domain authority, and trust.
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) will matter more, meaning all website content must be clear, well-structured, and backed by credible sources.
- Zero-click search will continue to rise as users leave the AI-generated response box less and less.
AI overviews
- 1.5 billion users now regularly use AI Overviews.*
- Since March 2025, AI Overviews have grown by 115%.**
- 7 in 10 searchers only read the first few lines of an AIO**
- AI Overviews reduce clicks by nearly 35%.***
- It’s predicted that organic click-through rates will decrease by 25% by 2026 because of AI Overviews.****
Source: * https://explodingtopics.com/blog/chatbot-statistics
What does the future of the internet hold?
Expect to see:
- Trusted TLDs will gain value as extensions like .ai, .tech, and .com may become signals of legitimacy in AI-generated search results.
- Domain names may become digital ID markers.
- AI-powered assistance will continue to grow.
- The internet will become more integrated into everyday objects and environments, with the Internet of Things (IoT).
Evolving technologies:
- Web 3.0
- Quantum internet.
- Sustainable internet.
Possible challenges and roadblocks:
- Security and privacy.
- The digital divide.
- Misinformation.
Social media use in 2025
Global social media use
UK social media use
Source: *https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-united-kingdom