Who were America’s biggest Web traffic winners and losers in 2014?

Who were the biggest winners and losers on the Web in the USA during 2014? At SimilarWeb, we looked closely at the data we collect about Web traffic to find out.

We compared the ranks of 100 popular websites in the USA during October 2013 and October 2014. Here’s what we found…

Here’s the full list of winners and losers:

The losers:

• Japanese electronics manufacturers are having a hard time when it comes to sales at the moment. That’s reflected in their Web traffic, too, with Toshiba and Sony coming high in the Losers list.
• Other electronics manufacturers, like Cisco and IBM, also had a bad year in terms of Web traffic. However, in the case of these B2B-focused companies, Web popularity doesn’t always tie in with overall success, however. Indeed, Cisco ended 2014 with its stock price at a seven-year high.
• Battlefield.com is losing visitors – probably due to the release of new competing products, such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
• Some American retailers performed worse than others in 2014. Toysrus.com, victoriassecret.com, jcpenney.com and sears.com approached Black Friday not in the best of shape.
• In the social media arena, Stumbleupon.com appeared to be the biggest social loser in the US market. That wasn’t because of a dramatic drop in traffic drop, but mainly because others were doing much better job of growing.

The winners:

• Microsoft’s increasing emphasis on cloud-based products help push Office365’s website to the top of the Winners table. Similarly, Apple’s increased push towards the cloud saw its iCloud.com site on the rise.
• Recent successes in space (such as the comet landing) and failures (rocket launch failure) drew increased public attention to NASA in 2014. This led to a jump of almost 550 positions during the year.
• It’s been said many times that interest in tech is ‘going mainstream’, and that’s borne out by increased US interest in publications that focus on technology and venture capital, as it is seen from increased rankings for The Verge and Tech Crunch.
• The year that was marked by aggressive Russian foreign policy recalling the days of the Cold War, was also marked by ever increasing popularity of Russian websites within the US. Yandex.ru and Mail.ru were the biggest winners among them.
• America’s online sports news scene is undergoing a shift from old brands to newer ones. While FoxSports was the overall biggest loser on our list, newer rival SBNation is on the rise, as our second biggest winner of traffic.
• Spotify.com continue to grow at an unprecedented pace, proving that the face of music industry will never be the same. Music streaming is the model that currently fits best to the market, despite some juicy controversies related to the service during 2014.

Here’s the full top 100 sites in the US for 2014:

Don’t miss: How America’s e-commerce giants compare across the desktop, mobile Web and mobile app arenas

This article was updated on 21 January to clarify details around NASA and increased interest in space.