Remember when you were younger how your parents told you not to talk to strangers? That’s the exact opposite of the premise of Omegle.
On March 25, 2009, Leif K-Brooks launched Omegle as a peer-to-peer (p2p) online chat service in which individuals could randomly talk with strangers all around the world. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Omegle surged in popularity.
UPDATE: As of 11/9 Omegle has had to shut down due to a lawsuit from a sexual abuse survivor. That said, I will keep this post up as I feel many will wonder just how big the platform was prior to it having to close it’s doors.
Google Trends reports the highest trending month for the search term “Omegle” in December 2020.
While some data such as this is easy to track, statistics about actual web traffic, market channel distribution, revenue, and the site valuation of Omegle.com are harder to trace.
This is because Omegle is a privately-owned company and does not release any of this data to the public. That said, my team and I took the time to find as many stats and facts about Omegle as we could.
- How Much Traffic Does Omegle Get?
- What Countries Visit Omegle the Most?
- How Does Omegle.com Get Website Traffic?
- How Long do People Stay on Omegle?
- How Much Money Does Omegle Make?
- How Does Omegle Make Money?
- Facts About Omegle
How Much Traffic Does Omegle Get?
Omegle has become even more popular over the last few years as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok showcase videos featuring chats from the platform. It’s no wonder that so many people continue to visit the website on a regular basis.
- Omegle averages 94 million monthly visitors via organic search traffic every month.
Using that number as a benchmark, we can determine:
- 23.5 million people Omegle every week
- 3.35 million people visit Omegle every day
- 139,880 people visit Omegle every hour
- 2,331 people visit Omegle every minute
- 39 people visit Omegle every second
- What’s more, all platforms indicate that Omegle doesn’t use ads to generate any of their site traffic.
What Countries Visit Omegle the Most?
On a monthly basis, the five countries generating the most traffic on Omegle were:
- United States with 29.19%
- India with 9.93%
- Italy with 5.9%
- Mexico with 5.2%
- The Philippines with 4.3%
- The United Kingdom with 4.29%
- Brazil with 4.08%
How Does Omegle.com Get Website Traffic?
It’s estimated that most of Omegle’s traffic comes either directly from the address bar as direct traffic or indirectly through a search engine as organic traffic, though a small amount comes through referral links and social media.
- 67% of Omegle traffic comes directly from people typing the site into their browser
- 33% of Omegle traffic comes from search engines, typically on terms like “Omegle”, “Omegle.com”, and misspellings like “Omegal”, which is searched 123,000 times per month.
Sources: Ahrefs, SimilarWeb
How Long do People Stay on Omegle?
Omegle can be a fun site to play around on and has an interesting service of connecting strangers with each other. Not only is it a great way to pass the time, but getting thoughts on other people’s perspectives can be interesting as well.
- Users spend an average of 5 minutes and 8 seconds on the site across all devices, with an average of 4 minutes and 37 seconds on desktop and 5 minutes and 15 seconds on mobile web devices
- Monthly there is a 65.03% bounce rate on desktop devices and a 58.98% bounce rate on mobile devices. A “bounce” is defined as when someone comes to a website on one page and leaves from the same page without interacting further.
- Monthly there is an average of 2.39 pages visited per session on all devices with an average of 2 on desktop devices alone an average of 2.44 on mobile devices
Sources: SimilarWeb
How Much Money Does Omegle Make?
Unfortunately, there is no verifiable information about Omegle’s revenue or other financial data because the company is not publicly traded.
Nonetheless, based on the traffic and estimated cost per click, we can equate that information to monthly revenue.
- It’s estimated that the value of the organic traffic Omegle gets monthly is worth around $18 million
Using that number as a benchmark, we can determine:
- $216 million in revenue every year
- $4.5 million in revenue every week
- $642,857 in revenue every day
- $26,786 in revenue hour
- $446 in revenue every minute
- $7.44 in revenue every second
It’s worth noting that based on this estimate of daily revenue, Omegle’s site value would likely be much higher. The industry standard multiple when selling a website is typically 35 times the monthly average.
- Assuming a profit margin of 80%, that means the site earns $172.8 million in profit every year.
- This means that each month Omegle generates $14.4 million in profit.
- Assuming these estimates to be true based on the data we’ve been provided, that means that Omegle is valued at $504 million.
How Does Omegle Make Money?
This is where things get interesting. If you start various chats on Omegle you’ll notice that there is virtually no advertising on the site.
Below is a snapshot of the interface.
So how does Omegle make money?
It’s pretty simple.
When a user goes to the site, they can join the “unmoderated section”.
Enter at your own risk. Obviously, there is quite a bit of sexually explicit content here. Which leads to how the site generates revenue.
It turns out, Omegle generates the bulk of their revenue from Adult Webcams.
Once you go into the unmoderated section, you can refresh the screen 5 times and after that you are brought to the page below.
On this page, every arrow is pointing to an affiliate link.
If a user clicks on the affiliate link, Omegle is either paid for the click or paid a % of what the user pays to see the adult webcams or possibly both.
There is no way to determine the revenue from this profit channel. We can provide estimates, but none of this will provide for accurate metrics because it’s based on too many assumptions.
Facts About Omegle
Before concluding our market analysis of Omegle, I wanted to take a little time to highlight a few facts about Omegle:
When Was Omegle Launched?
Omegle was officially launched as a text-based P2P online chat service on March 25, 2009. The following year, Omegle introduced a video-chat feature and has been regularly offering updates and improvements ever since without sacrificing the simple and intuitive user interface.
What Features Does Omegle Include To Keep People Safe?
While Omegle has been the target of criticism for adult-only material shared on the platform, the platform has taken steps to curb the sharing of pornographic material to underage and nonconsenting individuals.
In 2013, Omegle introduced a profanity filter and redesigned the platform to include two video chat formats:
- The “Monitored” Video Chat: Designed for users between 13 and 18 years old, this format is moderated in an attempt to protect underage individuals from potentially harmful content, including images of violence, profanity, nudity, or sexual content.
- The “Unmonitored” Video Chat: Designed for an over-18 audience, where adult-oriented materials can be shared between consenting participants (consent is granted when the user has clicked that they accept the terms prior to entering).
Was Omegle Creator Leif K-Brooks Included in Forbes 30 Under 30?
Yes, Leif K-Brooks, the creator of Omegle, was included in the 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 in the Enterprise Technology category.
Is Omegle a Publicly Traded Company?
No, Omegle remains a privately owned company, and the company does not share its financial data, web traffic statistics, or other site metrics publicly in any official capacity
Does Omegle Collect and Sell Personal User Data?
Omegle does collect personal data to be used for internal purposes or to provide to law enforcement if legally requested. However, the Omegle Privacy Policy explicitly reads:
“Omegle does not exchange your personal information for money.”
This means that while personal data is collected, it should never be sold to third-party vendors.
You can find the Omegle Privacy Policy here.
Does Omegle have an Android or iOS app?
No, Omegle is not app-based. It’s thought that by reducing its digital presence, Omegle can cut costs and increase revenue. However, these rumors have not been substantiated by representatives of the company.
In any case, Omegle can be easily accessed using Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Brave, Edge, and other internet web browsers on both desktop and mobile devices.
Summary
So there it is, everything we could find on the Omegle.com platform. Needless to say, this site has grown substantially since it was started in 2009 and continues to grow with time.