The Naspers-owned news website News24 continues to dominate the most-viewed websites in South Africa despite dropping around a million unique browsers, Narratiive’s statistics for July 2022 show.

BusinessTech, The South African, and MyBroadband however saw significant increases in readership compared with June 2022. News24 saw its readership decline from 11.6 million in June to 10.6 million in July, but it still sits comfortably in the top spot, nearly double that of the closest competitor.

BusinessTech and The South African both saw their readership increase by around 200,000, while MyBroadband increased its visitors by around 700,000, or 28%, in July.

Cars.co.za had 1.9 million visitors, while Gumtree, South Africa’s most popular classifieds website (beating Junkmail and many others), saw its unique browsers decline from 2.9 to 2.8 million in July.

Overall, readership for the top 10 websites in South Africa declined by around 500,000. Google Chrome will drop third-party cookies in early 2023, effectively making third-party-dependent tracking of Internet readers across multiple websites obsolete.

As a result, Narratiive — the official traffic measurement partner of the IAB SA, which provides accurate traffic statistics for South Africa’s top websites — announced it would shut down its traffic tracking service on the 31st of August 2022.

Traffic on South African websites will likely continue increasing as fibre network operators (FNOs) like Vumatel, Frogfoot, and Openserve try to make internet connectivity accessible to more South Africans.

These FNOs offer more-affordable fibre packages in lower-income areas through their Vuma Reach and Key, Frogfoot Air, and Openserve Web Connect networks.

Lower-income households with access to these networks can get high-speed uncapped fibre connectivity at a lower entry-point without committing to expensive binding long-term contracts.

The table below provides the top 10 online publications in South Africa and an overview of the leading publications in the general, business, tech, motoring, and classified categories.

The complete list is available from SA Internet Map. A breakdown of the top site for each category is included further below.