AI, Betting, Adult Sites Top Websites Visited By Nigerians In July — Report

Artificial intelligence, betting and adult-content platforms featured prominently among the websites attracting the most traffic from Nigerian users in July, according to data from digital intelligence company Semrush.

Google remained the country’s most visited website during the month, recording an estimated 318.45 million visits, while YouTube ranked second with 46.42 million visits.

XVideos, an adult-content platform, came third with 37.64 million visits, followed closely by SportyBet with 36.28 million. ChatGPT ranked fifth with 35.32 million visits, placing the artificial intelligence platform ahead of Facebook and WhatsApp.

The figures were contained in Semrush’s July 2026 ranking of the most visited websites in Nigeria. The company said the ranking is updated monthly to track shifts in web traffic and changes in user interests.

ChatGPT was among the notable gainers in the ranking, with traffic from Nigeria rising by 9.81 per cent from June and 33.43 per cent compared with July 2025.

Facebook ranked sixth with 32.85 million visits, while WhatsApp recorded 18.32 million to occupy the seventh position.

Sports website LiveScore was eighth with 15.46 million visits, while XNXX, another adult-content platform, ranked ninth with 15.42 million visits.

X, formerly Twitter, completed the top 10 with 15.17 million visits.

Instagram recorded 14.32 million visits to rank 11th, while TikTok followed in 12th place with 13.38 million.

Betting platform Bet9ja ranked 13th with 11.61 million visits, while Thenkiri recorded 10.86 million visits.

Claude, another artificial intelligence platform developed by Anthropic, occupied the 15th position with 10.23 million visits.

Claude recorded an especially sharp increase in Nigerian traffic, rising 11.4 per cent month-on-month and 440.86 per cent year-on-year, according to Semrush.

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

The figures show the strong presence of three categories — AI, betting and adult-content websites — among the platforms recording substantial traffic from Nigeria, alongside search engines, social media, messaging, video and sports services.

SportyBet’s 36.28 million visits represented a 25.72 per cent decline from the previous month but remained 5.83 per cent higher than its July 2025 traffic. Bet9ja, however, recorded a 43.68 per cent year-on-year decline.

Stake was one of the biggest monthly gainers among the betting platforms, recording a 94.41 per cent increase in traffic from June and a 104.87 per cent year-on-year rise. 1xBet recorded a 29.58 per cent year-on-year increase despite a 32.26 per cent monthly decline, while BetKing’s traffic fell by 8.85 per cent year-on-year.

Traffic to some of the country’s biggest mainstream platforms also declined. Google recorded a 6.58 per cent month-on-month fall and an 11.13 per cent year-on-year decline, while YouTube dropped 4.17 per cent from June and 6.25 per cent from a year earlier.

Facebook recorded a 38.92 per cent year-on-year decline, while X fell by 23.16 per cent.

TikTok, on the other hand, recorded a 16.49 per cent year-on-year increase. WhatsApp’s traffic rose by 16.85 per cent month-on-month, although it was down 3.55 per cent year-on-year.

The adult-content category was similarly led by XVideos, followed by XNXX and Pornhub. All three recorded year-on-year declines in Nigerian traffic, although they still ranked among the country’s most visited websites overall.

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

The company said its estimates were based on clickstream data reflecting the online activities of more than 200 million anonymised users. It added that artificial intelligence algorithms were used to analyse information from a combination of proprietary and external data sources.

The ranking, however, does not represent the number of unique Nigerians using the platforms. A single user visiting a website several times would generate multiple visits in the data.

The July figures therefore provide an indication of the volume of web traffic associated with major platforms rather than a direct count of their individual Nigerian users.

The strong showing of AI platforms is particularly notable, with ChatGPT now ranking fifth nationally and Claude entering the top 15, suggesting continued growth in Nigerians’ use of generative AI tools alongside more established online activities such as entertainment, social networking, sports and betting.