UK Top 100 Domains – The Most Visible Websites in the UK

From:

Steve Paine

Published: 04.08.2024

Updated for August 2024 we present the Top-100 most-visible websites on Google Search in the UK. Some analysis of major changes is provided below along with sector information from retail, non-profit and news media websites.

VI = Visibility Index – a measurement of organic search visibility.

Latest UK domain analysis

Since May 2024, there have been 9 new entries in the top 100 domains:

• shutterstock.com
• bandcamp.com
• oed.com
• gettyimages.co.uk
• github.com
• medium.com
• asda.com
• comparethemarket.com
• w3schools.com

With this, the following domains have fallen out of the top 100 since May 2024. These are:

• cdc.gov
• last.fm
• telegraph.co.uk
• pinterest.co.uk
• goodhousekeeping.com
• nationalcareers.service.gov.uk
• dailymail.co.uk
• techtarget.com
• expedia.co.uk

The domain with the most significant Visibility Index increase over the past 3 months is bbc.co.uk. In Q2’s IndexWatch, we delved into the factors driving the BBC’s organic growth.

Since November 2023, Reddit has continued to experience substantial visibility gains. If you would like a more detailed analysis on Reddit, we are tracking it in a separate report.

Interesting insights Q3 2024

Cleveland Clinic

Since May, clevelandclinic.org has seen a 24.75% uplift in its Google search visibility. This is due to the notable growth of the my.clevelandclinic.org subdomain.

The improvements seen are largely due to improved performance on the “health” subdirectory, prominently for the “diseases” content hub. Additionally, the ‘treatments’ section also experienced a slight visibility increase.

Since our last top domain update, “diseases” has acquired 173,240 new keyword rankings. Of these newly acquired keywords, 7% are sign/symptom-based (e.g. “ibs symptoms”, “signs of a stroke”) and a further 7% “how to” queries (e.g. “how to lower blood pressure”, “how to stop cramps”). 245,688 keywords have also seen position improvements.

Between April and June, many medical sites saw increased organic prominence while other, less relevant industry sources had their visibility down-weighted. But why is the America-based clinical group relevant to UK users? 

Despite most clinics being based in Ohio and the US more broadly, Cleveland Clinic has locations worldwide including 3 centres in London. It is also recognised as a leader in the medical field for research, education and health information.

Genius

Song lyric and music knowledge centre genius.com saw a 17.35% increase in SERP visibility. Pages located directly on Genius’ root domain saw the most organic improvement. There were also some smaller visibility wins for “artists” and “amp.” It must be noted though that the Visibility Index was down for a short period at the last point we measured it. On average, the domain has been quite stable over the last 24 month period.

Genius’ lyric pages are not organised within a directory, but are instead directly linked from the homepage slug. Many of the queries associated with these URLs have changed over the past 3 months due to keyword cannibalisation across lyric pages for songs with identical or similar titles. As a result, 57% of associated keywords have reaped the reward of higher ranking positions, in turn, contributing to higher overall domain visibility.

IKEA

Popular Swedish furniture brand, IKEA, has seen a 10.6% visibility improvement. Since May 2024, the directory that has seen the most organic growth is “cat” – which houses all of the website’s category pages.

Drilling down into specific product types, we can see that those with the highest SERP visibility are chest of drawers, followed by sofa beds and computer desks..

Since May 2024, 17% of IKEA’s category page rankings have increased. Additionally, a further 17% of the directory’s keywords were newly acquired. Of these new additions, 42% of these queries serve Google Shopping placements (e.g. “air purifier”, “metal wall shelves” and “baby play mat”).

Whilst the introduction of new and seasonal products has likely played a role, IKEA’s search prominence could be driven by competitor setbacks. Wayfair.co.uk has experienced a gradual decline in search visibility since late 2023, and dunelm.com saw a notable drop-off following the roll-outs of the March core & June spam updates.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)

The Royal Horticultural Society’s website, rhs.org.uk, has seen a 9.71% visibility improvement since May 2024.

Since September 2023, the domain’s search visibility has been steadily increasing, with the “vegetables” and “plants” sections experiencing the most growth.

The “Vegetables” section offers comprehensive guides on growing your own produce, while “Plants” provides a wealth of resources, including a plant information directory, plant identification tool and plant recommendations for different outdoor situations and environments.

The Royal Horticultural Society’s organic search competitors, Gardeners World and The Spruce have seen a decline in visibility during the growth period which started during the Helpful Content Update in September 2023.

This decline at Gardners World is attributed to the reduced performance of similar content, particularly in plant-related topics and how-to guides.

Non-profit domains (org.uk) top 100

The top 100 org.uk domains are (mostly) non-profit organisations. We’ve done some case-study analysis but below you can find the most recent Top 100 list below.

Top News Media Websites in Google Search

The table below shows the top 50 news media domains in Google UK organic search results. It’s important to remember that this is based on organic search results and doesn’t include the Top Stories box, Discovery or the Google News pages.

How can I grow a top-100 VI domain?

You’re not in the Top 100? Don’t worry! These domains represent an extremely small number of domains that rank. They are generally very mature, have a strong brand and usually cover an extremely wide range of topics. Be inspired by domains like therange.co.uk. 10 years ago it had a Visibility Index of just 0.56, representing 1/125th of the visibility it has today. The next.co.uk and goodhousekeeping.com domains are also good examples of ever-stable domains in the UK that one can take inspiration and ideas from. Look for good examples in your industry sector and learn from them.

IndexWatch

In our annual IndexWatch analysis, you’ll find a detailed list and analysis of the biggest winners and losers of the year. View all IndexWatch articles here.

A history of ranking domains: 11 years in 60 seconds

What is the SISTRIX Visibility Index?

We use a stable keyword set of 1.000.000 keywords (search phrases) and evaluate the first 100 search results on Google.co.uk to create a daily Visibility Index (VI) for desktop and mobile search. The keywords are chosen in such a way that they reflect the average search behaviour for the UK.

The results are then weighed by position and search volume for each keyword. Finally, we accumulate all the values for all the rankings found for a domain, which results in the SISTRIX Visibility Index.

SISTRIX has been calculating the Visibility Index scores with great accuracy and reliability since 2008. The VI is calculated for 30 different coutnries. On this page you’ll find more detailed information on the Visibility Index.

A free trial is always available.

Latest Update: November 2023: Updated top 100, and news media domain table and chart