⚡ Standards in the United Kingdom

Web standards are a set of guidelines and specifications that define and describe various aspects of the World Wide Web.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is a Western European country with a population of over 67 million people.

According to our statistics, standards are used on 90.7% of websites from the United Kingdom.

⭐ Most Popular in 2026

The following chart shows the top standards on websites in the United Kingdom in 2026, based on market share.

The most popular is CSS with an impressive share of 97.4%, followed by HTML with 95% and Open Graph with 61.9%.

CSS 97.4%
HTML 95%
Open Graph 61.9%
JSON 45.9%
DNS Prefetch 39.8%
RSD 38.5%
SearchAction 37.5%
Preconnect 28.5%
Preload 23.8%
XFN 23.1%
Speculation Rules 20.6%
Pingback 17.6%
YAML 4.2%
XHTML 4%
Acceptable Ads 2.1%

🚀 Highlights

Here is a list of the top standards that are more popular in the United Kingdom than worldwide.
Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.

5. DNS Prefetch ^(-1)
13. YAML ^(-1)
16. GraphQL ^(-4)
17. Trace Context ^(-4)
21. Sass ^(-1)
23. Humans.txt ^(-7)

✨ Top Web Standards

Below is a more detailed list of the top 25 of the 52 standards used on sites from the United Kingdom, ranked by their market share.

Rank	Name	Market share
1	CSS Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A stylesheet language used to control the presentation of HTML and XML documents, defining layout, colors, typography, and responsive behavior across different devices.	97.4%
2	HTML Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A markup language used to create web pages and is the de facto standard for documents displayed in web browsers.	95%
3	Open Graph Menlo Park, California, United States Enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph.	61.9%
4	JSON A lightweight, language-independent data exchange format derived from JavaScript and used to structure and transmit data between systems.	45.9%
5	DNS Prefetch Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="dns-prefetch" attribute on HTML elements.	39.8%
6	RSD An XML format that helps client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" weblogging software.	38.5%
7	SearchAction Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A structured data type from Schema.org that describes a website's search capability.	37.5%
8	Preconnect Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="preconnect" attribute on HTML elements.	28.5%
9	Preload Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="preload" attribute on HTML elements.	23.8%
10	XFN An HTML microformat that provides a simple way to represent human relationships using links.	23.1%
11	Speculation Rules Mountain View, California, United States API is used to improve navigation performance by prefetching or even prerendering future navigations.	20.6%
12	Pingback A method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents.	17.6%
13	YAML A data serialization language designed to be human friendly and work well with modern programming languages for common everyday tasks.	4.2%
14	XHTML Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States An XML-based markup language that extends HTML 4.	4%
15	Acceptable Ads Berlin, Germany A set of criteria defined by the independent Acceptable Ads Committee that allows publishers to reach ad-blocking users with respectful, non-intrusive and relevant ads.	2.1%
16	GraphQL Menlo Park, California, United States A data query and manipulation language for APIs typically used for remote client-server communications.	1.7%
17	Trace Context Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Defines standard HTTP headers and a value format for propagating context information that enables distributed tracing.	1.6%
18	OAuth Fremont, California, United States An open standard authorization protocol that allows applications to obtain limited access to user accounts without sharing passwords across web, mobile, and desktop environments.	1.5%
19	Prefetch Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="prefetch" attribute on HTML elements.	1.4%
20	IAB TCF Brussels, Belgium An open-source industry standard developed by IAB Europe that helps companies comply with GDPR and ePrivacy requirements when processing personal data in digital advertising ecosystems.	1.2%
21	Sass A stylesheet language that compiles to CSS and allows developers to use variables, nested rules, mixins, and functions.	1.1%
22	OpenSearch Seattle, Washington, United States A specification that describes a website's search engine, enabling browsers, apps, and services to discover and integrate it.	1.1%
23	Humans.txt A text file that can be created by developers to list the people who have contributed to a website.	0.8%
24	CGI Wilmington, Delaware, United States An interface specification that enables web servers to execute an external program to process HTTP requests.	0.8%
25	Less A backward-compatible CSS language extension inspired by Sass that supports variables, mixins, operations, and functions.	0.6%

👉 See Also

🌎 Standards in other countries

Data is based on the analysis of 157,356 websites from the United Kingdom.
Statistics were last calculated on March 20, 2026.
For details, see our methodology and disclaimer.