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Monday, June 7, 2021

Top 50 News Websites: April Saw Surge In Traffic

Right-wing news sites saw the biggest year-on-year growth in the US in April, according to Press Gazette’s analysis of visits to the most popular English-language news websites.



The Epoch Times, which has become a home for anti-China conspiracy theories around coronavirus, was the single fastest-growing site according to data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb. Visits to another pro-Trump site, Newsmax, increased by 171% to 29.4 million while visits to right-wing video platform Bitchute were up 150% to 19.3 million.

Also in the top five for year-on-year growth was far-right site thegatewaypundit.com, whose founder and editor-in-chief, Jim Hoft, was permanently suspended from Twitter in February for sharing false news about the US election. The site saw visits increase by 41% to 25.5 million.

Among the sites with the biggest year-on-year falls in traffic were several mainstream national news brands and business titles. Forbes.com saw the biggest fall in traffic as visits decreased by 54% to 53.2 million. Meanwhile, visits to The Atlantic’s site were down by 52% to 21 million and visits to newsweek.com were down by 50% to 22.7 million. Like for like comparisons will be impacted by the huge traffic to coronavirus-related content a year ago.

When it comes to monthly growth in visits, investigative tabloid RawStory came out on top. Visits to the site were 4% higher at 17.7 million in April. The New York Post and the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Wire also saw small traffic increases of 1%.



Despite the growth of some smaller players, the website of cable broadcaster CNN has by far the biggest audience share overall. Cnn.com was the most visited site in April with 410.9 million visits. This was followed by nytimes.com (273.9 million visits) and foxnews.com (244.1 million visits). British sites BBC.co.uk and BBC.com also made it into the top 10 with 113.1 million visits, as did dailymail.co.uk with 89.1 million visits in April.


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