Two travel brands make it to list of 300 top websites on the planet

Languishing within in a pile of 300 search engines, porn portals, entertainment hubs and retailers are just two travel websites.

Booking.com and TripAdvisor feature in the list of the most popular websites in the world, released this week as part of an overhaul of the SimilarWeb global online rankings.

What makes the list different from its existing rankings (and, it claims, other services) is that SimilarWeb has combined mobile and desktop traffic for the first time.

The new scoring method is calculated by the number of unique visitors with the number of pageviews, covering, it says, "both the quantity and quality of any site".

The top ten leading online brands in the world, according to the new methodology, are as follows:

1. Facebook
2. Google (dotcom site)
3. YouTube
4. VK
5. Yahoo (dotcom site)
6. Instagram
7. Wikipedia
8. Live
9. Twitter
10. Google (Brazil site)

Of note, as a result of the new calculations, Instagram and Wikipedia switched positions, whilst Twitter came in to the top ten from 11th spot.

So what about travel?

TripAdvisor.com sits in 170th place, up from 188 under the previous scoring method.

Higher still is Booking.com in 77th spot, but an increase of just two places.

Within some parts of the industry, mobile growth year-on-year has reached levels of 12.8% for hotels, 12.5% for online travel agencies and 5.4% for cruise brands.

Although the aviation wing of the industry had small y/y growth for mobile sites, Southwest bucked the trend massively with some 46% of its traffic now coming from mobile devices.

Southwest doesn't appear in the top 300 sites but it still managed to rise by more than 200 places to sit in 606th position.

NB:The full list of 300 websites is here.

NB:Web traffic image via BigStock.