Africa’s media relations tools provider, SquirrelPR has released its latest ranking report of Nigeria’s digital news publishers.

Released on Thursday, April 6, 2023, the report ranked 137 online news websites in different categories including News and Current Affairs, Business and Finance, Technology and Startups, and Entertainment and Lifestyle.

The ranking was based on total monthly visits, the total share of traffic in Nigeria as well as its ranking in the country.

The report shows that out of the 69 ranked news websites under News and Current Affairs category, only 30% generate above one million monthly visits. The top five most visited online news websites in Nigeria attract between 9 – 14 million monthly visits. These include legit.ng, punchng.com, dailypost.ng, vanguardngr.com, and lindaikejisblog.com.

In the Business and Finance category, 18 prominent online business news websites were ranked, out of which, only 16.75% attracted more than one million visits within the period under review. The top-ranked in this category include nairametrics.com, businessday.ng, and Africa.businessinsider.com.

The Technology category focused on news platforms with a preponderance of content on startups, the information technology industry, gadgets, etc. A total of 27 platforms were ranked. Out of these, only the traditional mainstream publishers with equally strong coverage of the tech sector attracted monthly visits of millions. Of the niche tech news platforms ranked, naijaknowhow.net, techcabal.com, gadgetstripe.com, techpoint.africa, and mobilityarena.com gross at least 700,000 monthly visits.

No fewer than 25 platforms were ranked under the Entertainment and Lifestyle category. Out of these, 75% attract more than 1 million monthly visits.

Speaking on the report, the co-founder of SuirrelPR, James Ezechukwu said the report was the first comprehensive ranking report prepared by SquirrelPR and that it was “inspired by the need to serve our clients that are constantly worried about which news platforms to prioritise in their placements”.

“We understand that there are thousands of news websites that serve all kinds of information to the Nigerian audience but for the purpose of this report, we focused only on platforms that serve the news and attract more than 10,000 monthly visits. We foraged over 400 news websites but we eventually settled for only the ones with at least 10,000 monthly visits,” Ezechukwu explained.