The Most Popular Online News Platforms In Zimbabwe (April 2018)

In March, we decided that we would publish the statistics of online news publications for each month and so here we are once again, looking at the numbers from the interesting month that was April.

We had some interesting highlights on the news scene as Mnangagwa released “the list”, the government legalised the use of Marijuana (for medicinal purposes)  and Strive Masiyiwa opened up on attempt by the former government to abduct him.

The List…

Anyway, here’s a look at how the battle for readers played out over April’s 30 days

Rank (previous rank)	Publication/Platform	Total Visits/Month	Facebook	Twitter	Pages/Visit
1 (1 )	Newsday.co.zw	1.95M	731 830	350 616	4.19
2 (3)	Herald.co.zw	1.31M	264 172	219 939	3.47
3 (4)	Bulawayo24.com	908.03K	109 330	46 743	4.84
4 (5)	zimeye.net	1.09M	232 394	25 859	3.72
5 (2)	newzimbabwe.com	914.11M	89 491	4 477	3.59
6 (7)	newsdzezimbabwe.co.uk	893.17K	61 523	7 829	3.72
7 (N/A)	nehandaradio.com	629.51K	417 216	119 269	2.50
8 (6)	Dailynews.co.zw	702.36K	170 299	190 156	3.20
9 (9)	iHarare.com	526.73K	140,635	6 804	4.07
10 (8)	chronicle.co.zw	444.77K	76,920	49 040	3.44
11 (14)	thestandard.co.zw	376.71K	149 508	35 513	4.41
12 (11)	Pindula.co.zw	319.52K	16 006	4 053	2.37
13 (13)	myzimbabwe.co.zw	317.71K	334 294	39 978	4.15
14 (12)	techzim.co.zw	272.34K	36 604	103 363	1.79
15 (10)	zimbabwesituation.com	248.88K	104 127	12 745	2.80
16 (15)	theindependent.co.zw	186.22K	33 736	50 443	4.39
17 (16)	sundaymail.co.zw	150.84K	86 922	95 919	3.10
18 (19)	soccer24.co.zw	135.71K	189 623	9 929	1.91
19 (N/A)	zimbabwe-today.com	78.99K	408 047	3 014	1.39
20 (18)	thezimbabwean.co	60.60K	40 964	8 556	1.67
20	263chat.com	N/A	98 176	305 102	N/A
21	zimbojam.com	N/A	55 781	102 909	N/A
22	*youthvillage.co.zw	N/A	33 026	2 261	N/A
23	technomag.co.zw	N/A	23 343	8 078	N/A
24	techunzipped.com	N/A	23 123	2 792	N/A
25	pazimbabwe.com	N/A	9,229	215	N/A
26	thezimtainment.co.zw	N/A	9 731	3 922	N/A
27	3-mob.com	N/A	8 750	14 545	N/A
28	thefootballcult.com	N/A	7 082	526	N/A
29	creativeloop.co.zw	N/A	2 698	1 601	N/A

New entries

There are two new entries in this list: Nehanda Radio and Zimbabwe Today. In the lists prior to this we had missed this entirely but fortunately one of the readers alerted us of these omissions in the comments section.

The reason why we missed quite a few and have been continuing to update this list is because it was a spontaneous list where we listed the entries we were thinking of from the top of our heads. So once again if we missed a site that is popular just get in the comments section and help us keep growing this list

Trends

Pages per visit have been steadily rising. Every entry – except the new entry of course- in the top 10 and almost throughout the entire list has seen the pages that viewers visit each time they are on the site rise. I’m not sure if this is because publishers are linking to other stories well in their articles or if its because the quality of journalism is rising, only readers can attest to that one.

Maybe’ it’s because of stories such as the legalization of Marijuana but that story was not covered on Techzim until recently but our views per visit also rose so it might not be that.

Disclaimer!

The statistics provided by similarweb (i.e. Monthly Visits and Pages/Visit ) are only estimates that can help inform readers that may want to advertise on these platforms but these are not the exact stats and if there are any errors for these stats it’s not on us. The statistics that we compile ourselves are in relation to Twitter followers and Facebook likes and if there is an error there, well, that’s on us.

[For the sites that have N/A under Total Visits and Pages/Visit, similarweb.com could not produce the required statistics. We proceeded to rank these using their popularity on Facebook. We chose FB over Twitter because it is used more widely in Zimbabwe and for most if not all sites on this list, their Facebook following is far larger than the corresponding Twitter fan base.]