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Type of site | Real-time statistics |
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Founded | 2004 |
Country of origin | United States of America |
Founder(s) | Andrey Alimetov |
Services | Statistics counters |
Parent | Dadax Limited |
URL | www |
Worldometer, [1] formerly Worldometers, is a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics. It is owned and operated by a data company named Dadax, which generates revenue through online advertising. [2] [3] [4] It is available in 31 languages and covers subjects such as government, world population, economics, society, media, environment, food and water, energy, and health. [5]
In early 2020, the website attained greater popularity due to hosting statistics relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The website was founded by Andrey Alimetov, a Russian immigrant to the United States, in 2004. [2] [6] In 2011, it was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association. [5]
This site changed its name from "Worldometers" to "Worldometer" in January 2020 and announced that it would migrate to the singular domain name. [1] [2]
In early 2020, the website gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. It came under cyber attack in March 2020. The site was hit with a DDoS attack, and was then hacked a few days later, resulting in incorrect information being shown on its COVID-19 statistics page for approximately 20 minutes. The hacked site showed a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases in Vatican City, which caused panic among some users of social media. [7] The Spanish government used its figures to claim that it had carried out more tests than all but four other countries. [2] Worldometers' COVID-19 figures have also been cited by Financial Times , The New York Times , The Washington Post , CNN , and Rede Globo .
Worldometer has faced some criticism over transparency of ownership, lack of citations to data sources, and unreliability of its COVID-19 statistics and live rankings. [2]
In April 2020, editors of the English Wikipedia decided that Worldometer's COVID-19 figures are often unreliable and should not be cited in any pages related to the pandemic. [2] [6]
Edouard Mathieu, the data manager of Our World in Data, stated that "Their main focus seems to be having the latest number [of COVID-19 cases] wherever it comes from, whether it's reliable or not, whether it's well-sourced or not." [2]
Virginia Pitzer, a Yale University epidemiologist, said that the site is "legitimate", but flawed, inconsistent, and containing errors. [2]
According to Axios , at the peak of user interest, [8] the website was the #28 most visited website in the world in April 2020. A plurality (25.8%) of visitors came from the United States, followed by Japan (17.9%), India (8.67%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), South Korea (5.8%), Canada (5.18%), Germany (3.13%), Australia (2.49%), Poland (2.18%), France (1.73%), Turkey (1.66%), Brazil (1.65%) and Argentina (1.52%). [9]
By March 2023, according to traffic data from Similarweb, Worldometer had dropped to the 5,963rd global place. [10]