Popular short video-sharing platform TikTok has surpassed tech giant Google as the most popular website of the year, according to a report by IT security company Cloudflare. The viral video app gets more hits than those of the US-based search engine, the BBC has reported quoting Cloudflare.  

The rankings show that TikTok had knocked Google off the top spot in February, March and June this year and has held the number-one position since August. 

In 2020, Google was first, and a number of other sites, including TikTok, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Netflix, were all in the top 10. 

According to the report, it is believed one of the reasons for the surge in Tiktok’s popularity is because of the COVID-19 pandemic as lockdowns have meant that people were stuck at home and looking for entertainment. 

The social network, which is owned by China-based Bytedance, now has more than one billion active users across the world, and that number continues to grow. 

In June 2020, the Indian government had banned the popular short-form video app TikTok amid border tensions with China.