Adult, Betting and AI Websites Dominate Nigerian Internet Traffic in July

Nigerians visited adult, betting and artificial intelligence websites in large numbers in July, according to data from Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool.

The data, published in Semrush’s ranking of Nigeria’s most visited websites for July 2026, showed that Google topped the list with 318.45 million visits, followed by YouTube with 46.42 million visits.

XVideos ranked third with 37.64 million visits, while SportyBet came fourth with 36.28 million visits.

ChatGPT ranked fifth with 35.32 million visits, representing a 9.81% increase from the previous month and a 33.43% increase year-on-year.

Facebook ranked sixth with 32.85 million visits, while WhatsApp recorded 18.32 million visits to rank seventh.

LiveScore ranked eighth with 15.46 million visits, followed by another adult website, XNXX, with 15.42 million visits. X, formerly known as Twitter, ranked 10th with 15.17 million visits.

Instagram recorded 14.32 million visits, ranking 11th, while TikTok ranked 12th with 13.38 million visits.

Bet9ja ranked 13th with 11.61 million visits, while Thenkiri recorded 10.86 million visits and ranked 14th.

Another AI platform, Claude, ranked 15th with 10.23 million visits. According to Semrush, Claude’s Nigerian traffic increased by 11.4% month-on-month and 440.86% year-on-year.

Pornhub ranked 16th with 9.41 million visits, followed by Stake with 8.87 million visits. 1xBet ranked 18th with 8.68 million visits, while BetKing ranked 19th with 8.06 million visits.

Semrush said its rankings are based on data from its Traffic Analytics tool and are updated monthly to monitor changes in website traffic and online user interests.

The company reported that Google’s traffic declined by 6.58% month-on-month and 11.13% year-on-year, while YouTube’s traffic fell by 4.17% month-on-month and 6.25% year-on-year.

Facebook recorded a 38.92% year-on-year decline, while X experienced a 23.16% decline during the same period.

However, TikTok recorded a 16.49% year-on-year increase, while WhatsApp’s traffic rose by 16.85% month-on-month, although it declined by 3.55% year-on-year.

Semrush said 87 of Nigeria’s top 100 websites were primarily driven by direct traffic, while one was mainly search-driven and 12 relied heavily on social traffic.

The company explained that its figures were derived from clickstream data covering more than 200 million anonymised users. Its artificial intelligence systems analysed information from both proprietary and external sources to produce traffic estimates.

Semrush stressed that the figures represent website visits and not the number of unique Nigerian users who accessed the platforms.