Star website emerges most searched news site in Kenya

The Star website has emerged as the most searched news website in Kenya, according to data released by Open.Trends.

As at November 2023, a significant total of 6.24 million visits to The Star, with a desktop share accounting for 1.25 million visits and the mobile share comprising an impressive five million visits.

The Star also recorded 7.33 million visits in October and 5.68 million in September.

Notably, a majority of the readers accessed the website directly, underscoring a substantial number of individuals navigating to The Star independently rather than through external referrals.

The second news site is BBC with 4.8 million visits followed by Standard which registered 3.53 million visits.

No other news website is appearing among the top 20 most searched.

According to Open. Trends, only sites run by tech giants and whose focus is not primarily news, are ahead of the Star in overall ranking for all industries.

They include Google, which was number one with 228.53 million visits, followed by YouTube which had 105.79 million visits, LinkedIn, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter).

Other sites behind the Star include 1xbet, Betika, eCitizen, Tiktok, Netflix, Jumia, Wikipedia, Jiji.

Also, Sport Pesa, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Uber, Amazon, National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) and Safaricom were some of the additional big sites behind Star.

The main traffic source on all the aforementioned sites was direct.

Star is one of the leading brands under the Radio Africa Group flagship.

Group's Digital Editor Francis Mureithi termed the ranking as inspiring noting that it was a result of hard work and team spirit.

"This is incredible news. We are indeed thrilled by this ranking. It will boost our morale further," he said.

"It's all about understanding your audience and tailoring content to suit the increasing demands and changing preference of today's audience."

This is the second time this year the Star is being ranked as the most searched website in Kenya.

In May this year, the Star Kenya Website became the number one news site in Kenya, Data Report dubbed Digital 2023- Kenya revealed.

The report released in May was based on Website Traffic that was monitored between September 1 and November 30, 2022, where The Star recorded the highest traffic during that period. 

Other notable news websites that made it to the top five are the BBC and Standard Media Group. Google.com and YouTube - search engines- ranked the top.