South African business websites: what 57,009 of them run
How many South African business websites have analytics, carry ad tags, still show an old footer or a WhatsApp button, by province and business type, from Pounce's reading of 57,009 sites.
South African business websites are mostly built on WordPress, and most of them track nothing. Pounce read the home pages of 57,009 South African business websites in October 2026: 60% have no analytics or tracking tag at all, 5.7% carry a Google Ads conversion tag, 5.7% the Meta Pixel, and 12% still show a copyright year of 2023 or earlier in the footer.
How we read them
Each site’s home page was fetched once and its code checked for the tags vendors publish: Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, the Google tag and Google Ads conversion tags (by their ID formats), the Meta Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, LinkedIn Insight, chat and WhatsApp buttons, booking and payment widgets, and the platform the site is built on. The businesses are those Pounce holds that are trading and have their own website, from its proprietary data and public registers.
Two limits matter. A tag loaded only after a visitor accepts cookies, or sent from the server, does not show in the page’s code, so “no analytics” is the most a public reading can say. And these are businesses with a website; many smaller businesses have none.
Six in ten track nothing
| What the site shows | Share of 57,009 sites |
|---|---|
| No analytics or tracking tag | 59.9% |
| Google Analytics 4 | 18.6% |
| Google Tag Manager | 12.7% |
| Still only the retired Universal Analytics | 6.9% |
| Google Ads conversion tag | 5.7% |
| Meta Pixel | 5.7% |
| WhatsApp button | 18.8% |
| Footer year 2023 or earlier | 12.1% |
| Not set up for phones | 5.8% |
| No HTTPS | 1.0% |
Universal Analytics stopped collecting data in 2024, so the 6.9% of sites still carrying only its tag have recorded nothing since then, usually without knowing it.
Gauteng and the Western Cape advertise most
| Province | Sites read | No analytics | Google Ads tag | Meta Pixel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gauteng | 16,866 | 57.4% | 7.0% | 5.6% |
| Western Cape | 15,371 | 54.7% | 6.4% | 6.8% |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 8,048 | 59.8% | 5.7% | 6.1% |
| Eastern Cape | 4,121 | 61.7% | 4.1% | 5.0% |
| Mpumalanga | 3,458 | 69.0% | 3.8% | 4.1% |
| North West | 3,072 | 69.7% | 4.1% | 4.3% |
| Limpopo | 2,611 | 72.5% | 2.8% | 3.5% |
| Free State | 2,597 | 67.7% | 3.0% | 4.3% |
| Northern Cape | 769 | 69.1% | 4.6% | 3.4% |
Outside the three big provinces, around seven in ten business sites have no tracking at all, and Google Ads tags are about half as common as in Gauteng.
By business type
Among the business types with the most sites read:
| Business type | Sites | No analytics | Google Ads tag | Meta Pixel | Footer 2023 or older |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar energy company | 356 | 56.5% | 11.0% | 7.0% | 10.1% |
| Car dealer | 458 | 35.4% | 9.4% | 9.4% | 4.1% |
| Plumber | 589 | 59.4% | 8.3% | 2.2% | 9.2% |
| Manufacturer | 993 | 55.9% | 7.0% | 4.5% | 13.7% |
| Marketing agency | 580 | 51.9% | 6.9% | 12.4% | 7.1% |
| Hotel | 799 | 52.4% | 5.5% | 8.5% | 9.5% |
| Restaurant | 669 | 59.8% | 3.7% | 9.4% | 10.6% |
| Real estate agency | 482 | 34.6% | 2.3% | 6.0% | 5.6% |
| Construction company | 1,388 | 73.2% | 3.2% | 1.7% | 13.4% |
| Accounting firm | 722 | 69.8% | 2.9% | 2.6% | 12.5% |
| Law firm | 714 | 72.1% | 2.5% | 0.8% | 16.1% |
| Engineering consultant | 466 | 67.8% | 1.7% | 0.9% | 17.2% |
Solar installers buy Google Ads more than any other type we read: one in nine carries the conversion tag. Car dealers and estate agents track the most, probably because dealer and franchise groups run their branches’ sites centrally. Law firms, engineering consultants and construction companies track the least and have the oldest footers. Half of marketing agencies run no analytics on their own site.
Platforms
WordPress runs 53.1% of the sites, Wix 4.5%, Next.js 2.1%, Joomla 1.2%, GoDaddy’s builder 1.1%, Squarespace 0.9% and Webflow 0.6%. Shopify sites are few among businesses found through Maps and registers (0.3%); most South African online shops in this set run WooCommerce on WordPress.
What this means if you sell to businesses
For agencies and web developers, the 34,000 businesses with a website but no tracking, and the 6,900 with a footer three or more years old, are the plainest leads in the country: the gap is visible on their own home page. For anyone selling to businesses that already spend on marketing, the 3,200 with a Google Ads tag and the 3,200 with the Meta Pixel have a budget this year.
Pounce filters on all of these. In the Businesses list, choose what their website shows (no analytics, paying for Google Ads, the Meta Pixel, an old footer, no online shop, WordPress or Wix) with province, town, business type and size, and export the list with phones, emails and the people who run each business.
Figures from Pounce’s reading of 57,009 trading South African business websites, up to 02:30 on 22 October 2026; the reading continues every night. Business types are Pounce’s own; a few hundred sites with no province are counted in the totals only.
