The big picture: According to a new report from SimilarWeb, total traffic to the top 100 sites in the world averaged 223 billion visits per month in 2019. That's an increase of 11.8 percent versus 2017 and eight percent when compared to 2018's total traffic stats.
With the proliferation of mobile devices, it's no surprise that overall web traffic is on the rise.
SimilarWeb described the magnitude of growth as "astounding." According to the publication, mobile traffic is up a whopping 30.6 percent since 2017. The growth partially comes at the expense of desktop traffic, however, which is down 3.3 percent over the same period.
The United States leads the pack in terms of overall traffic to the top 100 sites per country yet lags behind others including Canada, the Czech Republic, The Netherlands and Poland when it comes to the volume of traffic generated per person.
Unsurprisingly, and perhaps for obvious reasons, users are increasingly turning to mobile for "vices" such as viewing adult content, gambling and dating. Desktop still leads the way in some categories, however, like finances, games and streaming.
Also of interest is the fact that users are spending less time on sites than before. Over the past three years across both mobile and desktop, the overall visit duration has fallen 49 seconds. On average, users spend less than 12 minutes on a site before moving on.
Masthead credit: Smartphone by Jacob Lund. Stats by SimilarWeb.