Search, education, sport and writing remain popular online activities in Iran; however, new trends like online retail are beginning to push towards the top. Media hosting websites are also popular, due to the increase in bandwidth across the country and the rise in 3G and 4G LTE internet connections via mobile phones.
The Financial Tribune has compiled the list of the most visited websites from Iranian IP addresses, using Aelxa and Similar Web. Coming in at first place – no surprises here -- is search engine giant Google.
The all-encompassing online search provider retains its much vaunted number one spot against all of its international and local rivals like yooz.ir. Iran remains a top user of Google, taking 2.7 percent of its search traffic, being placed only behind Brazil and Japan in fifth place.
Coming in a close second is Yahoo.com. The granddaddy of search engines has stayed at the top of the charts for over the last decade.
Now sitting at number two the websites main source of Iranian users consists of both search and email, of which the majority of Iranian web users who registered emails over a decade ago continue to use the service.
Iranian weblog website blogfa.com sits in third place. The site garners an estimated 56.9 million hits with the majority of viewers visiting the site via social media. Blogs have fallen out of favor globally in recent years; however, their position in the minds of Iranians remains strong.
Sport is a popular pastime among Iran's young and old, thus Varzesh3.com comes in at fourth place. The local website has around 43 million visits a year. The website main staple of news comes via the Iranian Premier League and international fixtures. Over half of visits to the site are to check results of games, with "highlights" being the most search term.
In fifth place is Iran's largest online retailer Digikala. The website is likely to be visited by a majority male audience with a college-level education. The majority of the visitors to the site are usually at work. The website has lost some of its shine recently, with new entrants like Bamilo.com slowly edging up the charts with its competitive pricing structure.
Sixth place is reserved for the Persian language version of Wikipedia.org. The online user-edited encyclopedia remains a popular destination for local web users for its ease of use and unbiased editing techniques.
Internationally the website has done remarkably well with a recent increase in its overall traffic. The most searched term of the Persian version of the site is "health." The Persian language version of the site is also popular in Romania.
In seventh place comes the Persian copy of Facebook, Facenama. The local site is popular among those in the country who are unlikely to have a university degree. The websites main source of traffic is through a referral, the majority of which are fed through Google.
Ironically even though the site aims to tackle other social networks, the majority of its traffic comes from Facebook, and Cloob – another local social network. The website is very popular as a site for local people to share music and videos along with photos, making up 35 percent of its views.
Iran always throws curve balls at everyone with Ask.com, which comes in at eight place. The majority of searches using the search engine is most probably through an Internet Explorer add-on on computers using Windows XP.
In ninth place is Mihanblog.com, this website is most famous as Iran's first blogging website set up 11 years ago. The website continues to remain popular as it garners 22 million hits locally.
The website's integration with Google and social media has helped it remain in the top 9 websites. However it has begun to edge further down with its market share being pushed.
