In January 2024, search platform Google.com was the top ranking website in South Africa with an average monthly traffic of almost 509 million monthly visits. Social platform Facebook.com ranked second, with an average monthly traffic of 149 million total visits.

** percent of South African respondents answer our survey on "Most used websites and online services by type" with **************. The survey was conducted in 2025, among 2,017 consumers.

In 2022, "electronics" was the most popular e-commerce website category in South Africa by web traffic. The average monthly visits to such websites stood at over **** million, followed by the "general retail" category of general retail (approximately ** million visits). Moreover, traffic for fashion websites reached around *******.

This horizontal bar chart displays sites by site using the aggregation count in South Africa. The data is about sites.

See publication: Is it Fake? News Disinformation Detection on South African News Websites

We used, as sources, investigations by the news websites MyBroadband (https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/list-of-known-fake-news-sites-in-south-africa-and-beyond.879854/) and News24 (https://exposed.news24.com/the-website-blacklist/). These articles covered investigations into disinformation websites in South Africa in 2018. They compiled lists of websites that were suspected to be disinformation. During the period from those articles to present, a number of the websites have become inaccessible or offline. We attempted to use the internet archives WayBack Machine we could only get partial snapshots and error messages.

A web-scraper only worked for one of the sources although manual editing was still required to clean the text from Javascript code and some paragraph duplicates. On most of the other websites, a web-scraper did not work well as there were too many advertisements and broken parts of pages. Because of all these problems, most of the articles were manually copied and pasted and cleaned in flat files. In some cases, the text of articles could not be copied and was not made part of the South African disinformation corpus.

Citing the dataset

@inproceedings{de2021fake, title={Is it Fake? News Disinformation Detection on South African News Websites}, author={de Wet, Harm and Marivate, Vukosi}, booktitle={2021 IEEE AFRICON}, pages={1--6}, year={2021}, organization={IEEE} }

In 2021, a survey was conducted about the most popular reasons for using the internet in South Africa. It found that the top two most popular reasons for this were finding information and researching how to do things. Approximately ** percent of users reported that they used in internet for these two reasons.

Over ** percent of the internet users in South Africa watched or listened to online music videos weekly in the third quarter of 2023. Some ** percent used the internet to listen to music streaming services. Moreover, around ** percent listened to podcasts via the internet weekly, while over ** percent listened to online radio shows or stations.

In 2023, the most popular Google search query in South Africa was "Weather". Further, searches on "Hollywood bets" and "Betway" followed, scoring ** and ** in the index, respectively. "Facebook" ranked as the fourth most searched keyword in the country.

We asked South African consumers about most used video live streaming sites by brand and found that YouTube Live takes the top spot, while MLG is at the other end of the ranking.These results are based on a representative online survey conducted in 2023 among ***** consumers in South Africa.

We asked South African consumers about "Most popular online shops" and found that ************** takes the top spot, while ********** is at the other end of the ranking.These results are based on a representative online survey conducted in 2025 among 2,020 consumers in South Africa. Looking to gain valuable insights about customers of online shops across the globe? Check out our reports about consumers of online shops worldwide. These reports offer the readers a comprehensive overview of customers of eCommerce brands: who they are; what they like; what they think; and how to reach them.

As of December 2023, most of the web traffic in South Africa was conducted via the Google web browser Chrome. Just over ** percent of the online traffic was made through the web browser. Safari was its closest contender, with **** percent of the web traffic. On the other hand, the web browser marketed by Microsoft, Edge, reached a share of nearly *** percent.

Google is the leading search engine in South Africa. As of January 2023, almost ** percent of the searches on the web were conducted through this search engine. Its closest contender was Bing, with a share of *** percent. Yahoo! ranked third with a share of only *** percent.

As of the third quarter of 2023, around ** percent of the internet users in South Africa played games on any type of device. The smartphone was the most popular device used for gaming in the country, with a share of nearly ** percent. Furthermore, almost ** percent of internet users in South Africa used their laptops or desktops for gaming.

In 2021, South Africans aged ***** used the internet the most, first in the morning. According to a survey, this referred to **** percent of the internet-user respondents in the country. This age group also registered the highest share in terms of using the internet while traveling or commuting. Furthermore, internet usage at work was more common among people between 45 and 65 years, while the largest share of people who surfed the internet at home was aged *****.

Based on a survey conducted in South Africa, Black South Africans accessed the internet the most at all the observed times and places, compared to other population groups. Specifically, **** percent of the Black population used the internet at work, followed by **** percent of the white individuals. In 2022, Black South Africans were the largest population group in the country, followed by the colored and white populations.

In January 2025 mobile devices excluding tablets accounted for over ** percent of web page views worldwide. Meanwhile, over ** percent of webpage views in Africa were generated via mobile. In contrast, just over half of web traffic in North America still took place via desktop connections with mobile only accounting for **** percent of total web traffic. While regional infrastructure remains an important factor in broadband vs. mobile coverage, most of the world has had their eyes on the recent 5G rollout across the globe, spearheaded by tech-leaders China and the United States. The number of mobile 5G subscriptions worldwide is forecast to reach more than ***** billion by 2028. Social media: room for growth in Africa and southern Asia Overall, more than ** percent of the world’s mobile internet subscribers are also active on social media. A fast-growing market, with newcomers such as TikTok taking the world by storm, marketers have been cashing in on social media’s reach. Overall, social media penetration is highest in Europe and America while in Africa and southern Asia, there is still room for growth. As of 2021, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube are the most popular social media platforms worldwide. Facebook and Instagram are most effective With nearly ***** billion users, it is no wonder that Facebook remains the social media avenue of choice for the majority of marketers across the world. Instagram, meanwhile, was the second most popular outlet. Both platforms are low-cost and support short-form content, known for its universal consumer appeal and answering to the most important benefits of using these kind of platforms for business and advertising purposes.

According to a survey conducted in 2021, South Africans aged 45-64 years most often used less than **** hours of the internet compared to other age groups. Moreover, individuals aged 25-34 years were in the lead in internet usage in terms of durations between 5-9 hours, 30-39 hours, and over ** hours. Also, most young people (15-24 years) surfed the internet for 20-29 hours.

As of February 2025, Nigeria had 107 million internet users - the highest number reported all over Africa. Meanwhile, Egypt ranked second with over 96 million users. The majority of web traffic in leading digital markets in Africa originated from mobile devices - in Nigeria, one of the countries with the largest number of internet users worldwide, 86.2 percent of web traffic was generated via smartphones and roughly 13.3 percent via PC devices. This is due in part to the fact that mobile connections are much cheaper and do not require the infrastructure that is needed for traditional desktop PCs with fixed-line internet connections. Anticipating remarkable growth: Africa's internet user surge and projected milestones The projected trend for Africa indicates a consistent rise in internet users from 2024 to 2029. It will have a collective addition of 337.3 million users (equivalent to a growth of 51.79 percent). Following fifteen successive years of growth, the user count is anticipated to reach a record high of 1.1 billion by 2029. Furthermore, the online penetration rate on the continent was 43 percent – which was below the global average, measured at around 68 percent. Unveiling internet trends The region has witnessed a steady increase in internet users over the years. In January 2024, Southern Africa stood out as the African region with the most substantial internet penetration rate, reaching approximately 73.1 percent. The proportion of individuals accessing the internet in this part of Africa and Northern Africa surpassed the global average (66.2 percent). Moreover, Morocco boasted an impressive internet penetration of about 91 percent, securing its position as Africa's foremost country. Libya held the second position with a penetration rate of approximately 88 percent, followed closely by Seychelles at around 86.7 percent.

As of February 2025, Morocco had an internet penetration of over 92 percent, making it the country with the highest internet penetration in Africa. Libya ranked second, with 88.5 percent, followed by Seychelles with over 87 percent. On the other hand, The Central African Republic, Chad, and Burundi had the lowest prevalence of internet among their population. Varying but growing levels of internet adoption Although internet usage varies significantly across African countries, the overall number of internet users on the continent jumped to around 646 million from close to 181 million in 2014. Of those, almost a third lived in Nigeria and Egypt only, two of the three most populous countries on the continent. Furthermore, internet users are expected to surge, reaching over 1.1 billion users by 2029. Mobile devices dominate web traffic Most internet adoptions on the continent occurred recently. This is among the reasons mobile phones increasingly play a significant role in connecting African populations. As of early January 2024, around 74 percent of the web traffic in Africa was via mobile phones, over 14 percentage points higher than the world average. Furthermore, almost all African countries have a higher web usage on mobile devices compared to other devices, with rates as high as 92 percent in Sudan. This is partly due to mobile connections being cheaper and not requiring the infrastructure needed for traditional desktop PCs with fixed-line internet connections.

In 2021, South Africans in living standard measure (LSM) bracket 3-6 (**** percent) used the internet first thing in the morning more than individuals in higher brackets. When traveling or commuting, the internet was accessed more by people within LSM 7-8 (**** percent), while at work, LSM 9-10 (**** percent) represented a slightly higher share of internet users than LSM 7-8 (**** percent). Furthermore, people categorized under LSM 7-8 were the largest to use the internet at school, while at home, users within LSM 3-6 accessed the internet more than the rest.

The LSM tool divides the population into ** groups, ** being the highest living standard level and *** being the lowest. The tool categorizes people according to their living standards with criteria such as ownership of major appliances. Consequently, it is used as an instrument to identify target markets for the distribution of consumer goods in a given country.