About 32.6% of all Zimbabweans have internet access. While the cost of internet data is high preventing the masses from accessing the internet, internet usage keeps on increasing.
What is Traffic: Search & Direct Traffic?
Traffic are visitors to a website. People come from websites either directly or from searches like Google and Bing. A direct visit occurs when someone writes a URL directly in the browser, clicks on a bookmark, opens an app, or clicks a link from an app or offline source, e.g documents etc.
In addition, there’s referral traffic, which is traffic from link clicks from other websites (not apps).
Most Visited Websites in Zimbabwe From Searches
Search traffic comes from popular search engines: Google and Bing are more popular amongst Zimbabweans. These websites get their traffic from searches when people input some keywords, e.g EPL table, or writing the website/business name directly in the search, e.g Facebook.
If you look at the whole data of 100 by clicking the link above, football is the most searched as more soccer websites show up followed by social media, educational institutes like UZ and MSU, some news, and job vacancies.
YouTube
YouTube comes up in most searches as most Zimbabweans use Google for searching, e.g. soccer highlights, music videos, entertainment education etc.
Wikipedia
The big giant almost always shows up for informational searches.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Most social media websites show up in searches because of their high-ranking authority. These include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They show up in most search queries and get clicked.
WhatsApp probably gets search traffic when people search for “WhatsApp” in Google
Premier League
Football is one of the most popular and watched sports in Zimbabwe. The premier league website shows up when searching English Premier League tables, fixtures, squads, news etc.
Google Play Store
With most Zimbabweans using Android phones, Google play store is the native and most used app/website to download applications and games. Some people search for apps on Google and click on the play.google.com website to download which usually redirects to the app.
Pinterest is mainly used for finding photos e.g. hairstyles, ideas, and inspiration.
Sky Sports
Another popular sports website among Zimbabweans for getting football news and updates.
Most Directly Visited Websites in Zimbabwe
When it comes to direct website visits, the data becomes interesting. Compared to searches, websites that are directly visited are typically gambling, explicit, and illegal download sites.
Google is the most visited website in Zimbabwe. Most Zimbabweans use Google for searches.
YouTube
YouTube is popular amongst Zimbabweans mainly for entertainment, football highlights, and education. These direct visits are either from direct app/URL, bookmarks, shared links etc.
Facebook is directly visited from direct URLs, apps, bookmarks, shared links etc.
*videos
Adult websites are popular amongst Zimbabweans and most of these are visited directly as they’re don’t appear in searches.
Whatsapp get direct visits from the app and WhatsApp web.
Chat GPT
Chat GPT has grown in popularity amongst Zimbabweans as a tool for quick answers, and students are using it to write assignments.
LinkedIn is used by Zimbabweans for professional networking and job searches.
Goojara
Zimbabweans visit goojara directly for downloading movies and series.
Instagram is not the first-choice social media amongst Zimbabweans. It’s not popular amongst millennials but Gen Z: kids born in the late 90s and 2000 onwards.
Bing
Microsoft Windows is the most used computer operating system in Zimbabwe, and Bing (owned by Microsoft) receives most of its traffic from Microsoft Edge, which comes natively with most Windows OS.
Conclusion
Overall, comparing individual visits, Google and YouTube are the most visited websites in Zimbabwe. However, combined, social media platforms remain the most visited compared to YouTube while football is the most searched based on our calculated analysis and understanding of Zimbabwean people
