It's literally based on the (estimated) number of search engine hits for e.g. "Python programming" on Google and a handful of site-specific search engines (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Walmart, microsoft.com, etc), with some manually applied tweaks for languages with easily confusable names. Many of the fluctuations in rankings - like the big dip in the ranking for C between 2015 and 2018 - probably have more to do with changes in search engine algorithms than any real change in popularity.
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Because TIOBE's methodology is terrible, and always has been.
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_defin...
It's literally based on the (estimated) number of search engine hits for e.g. "Python programming" on Google and a handful of site-specific search engines (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Walmart, microsoft.com, etc), with some manually applied tweaks for languages with easily confusable names. Many of the fluctuations in rankings - like the big dip in the ranking for C between 2015 and 2018 - probably have more to do with changes in search engine algorithms than any real change in popularity.
https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2026/04/14/language-rankings-1-2...
This is usually considered a better ranking. This has Rust at #20.
Oh, thanks for the info. That's suprisingly a weird index to measure usage popularity...