The world's top million websites received 2.243 trillion visits in the first quarter of 2022. In the third quarter of 2026 they received 1.970 trillion, a drop of 12.2%. Rand Fishkin of the marketing research firm SparkToro published the figures on 10 November 2026, using Similarweb's panel of desktop and mobile browser traffic.
The low point came earlier this year. In the first quarter of 2026 the same sites drew 1.914 trillion visits, 14.7% below the peak. Traffic has recovered a little since then and remains well short of 2022.
More people online, fewer visits from each
The per-person number is starker. Internet users worldwide grew from 4.95 billion at the end of 2021 to 6.15 billion in the third quarter of 2026, roughly 24% more people. Total visits fell over the same period, so visits per user dropped by 29.2%.
That figure needs a caveat. The user series jumped from 5.65 billion to 6.04 billion in the third quarter of 2025 after its compiler revised its estimates for India and China, and it is unclear how much of the per-user decline comes from that revision. The 12% fall in total visits does not depend on those estimates.
The first version of the research put the decline at 24%. Fishkin corrected it the same day, saying the earlier graph and data were wrong. The figure that stands is 12%.
The giants did not absorb the difference
You might expect the visits lost by smaller sites to have moved to Google, YouTube and the other giants. The data shows little of that. The top 100 sites' share of all visits rose by only about 3% over five years, which Fishkin describes as stagnation.
He does not name a single cause. His list includes people moving to apps, which the panel does not measure, search engines and AI tools that answer without sending a visit, and social platforms that discourage outbound links. He also points to his earlier research finding that fewer than a third of Google searches in 2026 end in a click.
Limits of a worldwide average
The study is global and has no country breakdown. Fishkin suspects traffic fell harder in the US, the UK and Europe while Asia and Africa grew. There is no figure for Israel or any other single market, so it is not a benchmark to hold one site against.
It still matters to any business that pays for a website or promotes one. The pool of visits is not growing, and a site can hold its Google rankings while its visitor count falls. A dip in Google Analytics sessions does not on its own mean something on the site broke.
Counting enquiries instead of sessions
For a small business the number that pays the bills is how many people called, sent a message or left their details. A site with fewer visits and more enquiries is doing better than before. Set those actions up as events in your analytics and follow them by source rather than watching the sessions graph. Google published guidance this week on how to spot Search visits in your analytics, which helps separate the channels.
Some customers never reach the site at all. They see the business name in an AI answer, a Google Business Profile or a recommendation on social media, and phone or message directly. Businesses outside the US can now claim a profile in ChatGPT and see how often they were mentioned, which fills part of the gap analytics cannot see. A site that gets visits and produces no enquiries has a different problem, and the guide to a website that brings no leads covers the common causes.