This is not The Headies.

We aren’t giving any awards…yet. All we’ve done is look at Nigerian sites with the highest Alexa ratings. I know y’all hate Alexa rankings for many reasons. But until we invent a better way of measuring these things, we will have to make do.

A bit more on our methodology. This is very different from a top Nigerian online destinations list for which we would simply choose the first 100 sites that popped up under Alexa’s Nigeria category. Here, we chose the first hundred Nigerian websites, taking care to filter out the ones that are not of Nigerian origin or were not purpose built for Nigeria. So OLX.com.ng is a Nigerian website for our purposes, but CNN.com is not.

This list is valid as at time of publication. The first twenty sites on the list are worthy of note. So, first of all…

Here are Nigeria’s top twenty websites
1. Nairaland.com – Nairaland is one of Nigeria’s oldest discussion forums, if not the oldest. It’s vocal membership talk about everything Nigerian, from politics to sports and gossip. Every year of Nairaland’s age shows — it’s owner, Seun Osewa hasn’t bothered to add any significant features or update the interface and experience to reflect current internet tastes, and has remained steadfastly aloof to acquisition overtures. Despite its staid looks however, Seun’s forum crossed the million mark in registered users earlier in 2013 and overtook South African News24 in traffic. Its top spot is undisputed.

2. Vanguardngr.com – Vanguard Newpapers’ online outpost is runner up to Nairaland. News is one of the biggest drivers of Nigerian internet traffic, and the thirty year old paper has deftly translated its offline cachet into online dominance of Nigerian news online.
3. Punchng.com – A lot like Vanguard, only in third place.

4. LindaIkeji.blogspot.com – Isn’t she amazing? You bet. Unless you (1) aren’t a Nigerian (2) on the internet and (3) are uninterested in Nigerian gossip, fashion, life style and more, Linda and her Google-powered blogspot need little introduction. Definitely one of the wonders of Nigerian internet, Linda is increasingly becoming a permanent fixture of Naija pop-culture and has spawned a slew of internet celebrity wannabes. Word on the street put her current earnings from the blog (made up of advertising and sponsored content) between five and ten million Naira every month. Perhaps more. Linda recently built a 5 bedroom duplex for her parents in her hometown, leaving her free, according to her, to finally buy herself a Range Rover.

5. Konga.com – The jury is still out about whom to crown Nigeria’s e-commerce king, but Konga is out of the two biggest online shopping destinations in Africa’s most populous country. A combination of digital and offline marketing strategies drives lots of traffic to their inventory. It also helps that Nigerians love to shop.

6. Jumia.com.ng – Between the this Rocket Internet-backed online store and Konga, I’m pretty sure no single entity has a bigger digital marketing campaign. Hmm, except maybe for the telcos. Still, Jumia spends insane amounts of money on Adwords, Facebook, Twitter and stuff we probably don’t know about. Jumia launched months before and had a decent headstart on traffic, is currently eating Konga’s dust at sixth place.

7. GTBank.com – No bank in Nigeria comes close to their scale in terms of IT services deployed. Internet banking is the main draw for their site, and at the 7th position, Nigerian netizens clearly do a lot of it. The nearest to GTBank in web popularity is Zenith Bank at number 50.

8. Naij.com – Created by Russians who have executed and monetised similar content models in other countries, Naij is a massive aggregator of news, sports, fashion and other content. The platform pushes out massive volumes of content to which it drives traffic with equally aggressive social media marketing campaigns. Their strategy has rewarded them with the 9th spot on our list.

9. InformationNG.com – Nipping at Naij’s heels is Information Nigeria. Founded in 09 by the now 23 year old Kingsley Ezeani who was recently named the Future Awards winner for new media, the platform does waaaay north of 10 million pageviews every month. Last time I checked, the site was sharing over 120 pieces of aggregated/original content (70/30) with its over 1 million strong following on Facebook.
10. Saharareporters.com – Famed for their biting anti-establishment flavour, the New York based band of citizen reporters and Nigerian political opinionistas attract a lot of attention — and pageviews.

11. BellaNaija.com – Uche Pedro’s fashion, lifestyle and weddings blog has been the clear leader in that space since the late 2000s, capturing not just Nigerians in Nigeria but also a strong diasporan following. The blog has been doubling down on weddings of late.

12. Jobberman.com – Since its launch in 2009, what is currently Nigeria’s biggest jobs portal quickly rose into the ranks of the country’s most trafficked websites and stayed there. Initial seed funding from L5, followed on by Tiger and later OAM has consolidated their position as leader in that space for as far as we can see.

13. OLX.com.ng – Of all the local online classifieds, the Nigerian version of the MIH’s OLX seems to be doing the best job of getting Nigerians to buy and sell stuff online.

14. TheNationOnlineNG.net – the long and obscure domain can’t be doing it any favours, but the Nation is yet another Nigerian daily that has found its way online and managed to corner some decent traffic.

15. Wakanow.com – We don’t know how many of them are simply browser-shopping for ticket prices, but “flygerians” abound, making Nigeria’s premier travel bookings service the 15th most trafficked website.

16. Interswitchng.com – How/why this one is here beats me, and the only explanation I can venture is that it must be something to do with the Quickteller website where people go to make all sorts of transactions – airtime top-ups, bill payments, flight bookings and more.

17. LadunLiadi.blogspot.com – One of Linda’s proxy disciples who has risen to notable heights of prominence in Nigerian gossip and lifestyle. She basically copied Linda’s M.O (blogspot, ads, content focus), no editing. While nowhere near LindaIkeji-esque levels of greatness, a single blogger in 17th place Nigeria-wide is not one to be taken lightly.

18. Vconnect.com – A local search engine for Nigerian places and things of interest, this Indian-led company is sitting on a fearsomely large (if not the largest) treasure trove of Nigerian data and metadata. A good number of searches for things Nigerian will bring up results from Vconnect’s website. Vconnect is making visible moves to work with local developers to build locally relevant apps and services that leverage Vconnect’s database.

19. NotJustOk.com – In the music category, NJO continues its reign of traffic and amid threats of disruption by local music discovery upstarts, the blog founded in 2006 by Demola Ogundele remains the premier source for the latest Nigerian music and gist.

20. ThisDayLive.com – Not sure how the offline newspaper ranks in terms of offline circulation among Nigerian dailies, but copping fourth place for online news and number 20 overall isn’t too shabby, is it?