75% of Top Conservative News Websites Experience Traffic Declines in April
Unique Visitors to DonaldJTrump.com Plunge 99%
May 26, 2021 – Fifteen of the top 20 conservative websites experienced year-over-year (YOY) decreases in unique visitors, according to TheRighting’s exclusive analysis of April 2021 mobile and desktop traffic based on Comscore data. It was the third straight month that the majority of conservative websites in TheRighting’s top 20 chart saw YOY declines in unique visitors.
Newsmax bucked the trend by posting a 47% gain in unique visitors. It was Newsmax’s sixth straight month of YOY audience increases.
Foxnews.com notched its fifth consecutive month of declining traffic, a losing streak also matched by other prominent conservative websites including the Washington Examiner, Washington Times and National Review.
“The taming of the pandemic in the U.S. and the relatively drama-free Biden administration have led to smaller news audiences across the political spectrum,” said Howard Polskin, President and Curator, TheRighting. “Compared to the tumultuous Trump years, this appears to be the new normal. Audience numbers are likely to remain at these modest levels for the foreseeable future barring unseen developments.”
Leaders and Losers Among Top 20 Conservative Websites for April 2021
(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)
Leaders
· Bongino.com (+65%)
· Newsmax (47%)
· Hannity.com (38%)
Losers
· Washington Times (-84%)
· PJ Media (-79%)
· CNS News (-78%)
YOY traffic to the three U.S. mainstream news websites followed regularly by TheRighting also skidded in April. Unique visitors dropped at The New York Times brand (-34%), Washingtonpost.com (-30%) and CNN.com (-16%).
Traffic Nose-Dives at DonaldJTrump.com
The website for former president Donald Trump showed a 99% decline in YOY unique visitors. The site drew 161,000 unique visitors in April 2021 compared to 14,421,000 in April 2020, according to Comscore data. “TheRighting has begun monitoring traffic to Mr. Trump’s website because it’s clear he now wants to use it more aggressively to pump his opinions into the nation’s information bloodstream,” said Howard Polskin. “Monitoring whether traffic increases or declines can be viewed as a barometer to his popularity, especially since he started his ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’ blog on his site this month. We’ll report on his May traffic and whether the blog boosted Mr. Trump’s audience later in June when all the data is in.”
Parler Talk
The number of unique visitors for three conservative-friendly social media sites for April 2021 are as follows:
· Rumble (8,132,000; +148% vs year ago)
· Parler (2,228,000; year-ago data not available)
· MeWe (1,976,000; +95% vs year ago)
Each month, TheRighting examines Comscore data on dozens of prominent conservative websites that post original content. TheRighting ranks the top 20 conservative websites on the basis of unique visitors and also provides data on whether unique visitors have increased or decreased year over year. That information is posted on the Metrics section of TheRighting’s website.
TheRighting also publishes a listing of Who’s Who in Conservative Media as well as an A-Z Guide to Right-Wing Media and an A-Z Guide to Liberal Media, and updates them regularly. Additionally, TheRighting has created a Top 20 News Podcast Chart and the Trump Book Tracker, which monitors all Trump-related books that will be published in 2021 and beyond.
Source: Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, Custom-defined list, including, but not limited to Foxnews.com, Breitbart.com, DailyCaller.com, WashingtonExaminer.com, WesternJournal.com, Washingtontimes.com, Total Digital Audience, April 2021, U.S.
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CORRECTION: A previous version of this chart incorrectly stated that Foxnews.com had 14,602,000 unique visitors in April 2021 resulting in an audience decline of 46%.