The paper has reportedly suffered subscription cancellations in recent months after proprietor Patrick Soon-Shiong intervened to block its editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the US presidential election. The Los Angeles Times more than doubled its web traffic month-on-month in January as its home city battled historic wildfires. The other six top-ten sites lost visits, although Fox News (260.5 million) dropped less than a percentage point. The Gateway Pundit, a website that promoted false claims the 2020 US presidential election was stolen, was not far behind, rising 9% month-on-month to 29.5 million. The sharpest month-on-month fall was seen at January’s fastest grower, The Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo Finance and People both shuffled up the board one spot to sixth and seventh place respectively, pushing the New York Post (150 million visits, down 7% year-on-year) down to eighth. The New York Times maintained its position in second place, with 361.8 million visits, and Fox News was third on 293 million. After Athlon the fastest-growing site in the US year-on-year was The Daily Dot (up 174.2% year-on-year to 29.2 million), which entered the top 50 for the first time in August.
Each of the ten biggest news websites in the US saw traffic decline year on year in October, according to the latest Similarweb data. The US Sun followed on both growth metrics, up 52% year on year and 59% month on month to 34.9 million visits. In contrast to the annual figures, however, all of the ten biggest sites saw month-on-month growth of at least 3% in January. It was followed by People (161.4 million visits, up 16% year-on-year) and both were the only large sites to see year-on-year growth for the second month in a row. The Independent also featured among the fastest-growing websites year-on-year coming in fifth place having seen visits up 40% compared to last January.
Climate news site The Cooldown saw the second most year-on-year growth, with visits rising 152% to 21.9 million. The fastest year-on-year growth came at Athlon Sports, which attracted 28.5 million visits in June, up 484% from the prior year. In addition Newsweek saw visits rise 144% compared to June the prior year, but it did not see the most year-on-year growth among the top 50. ABC News (83.5 million visits) saw the most growth between June and July, increasing traffic 81%. The largest gains month-on month were at political and hard news sites, again reflecting a historic July for news.
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- On the other end of the scale the fastest year-on-year traffic losses were seen by the Los Angeles Times (25.8 million, down 30% on October 2023), the Daily Mail (104.1 million, down 22.8%) and Fox News.
- British news site The Independent (34.8 million), which claimed in November to have become the biggest British-born news site in the US according to Comscore data, also notched 70.4% year-on-year growth.
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NBC News, similarly, grew its traffic 112.5% compared with last year, Visit Kulturbloggen while USA Today managed growth of 65.5%. The biggest fallers compared with December 2023 among the whole top 50 were UK tabloid The Sun (23 million, down 55%), The Los Angeles Times (19.4 million, down 33.2%) and Huffpost (43.6 million, down 21%). Among the nine websites to lose traffic month-on-month, five saw decreases of 2.1% or lower.
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British news site The Independent (34.8 million), which claimed in November to have become the biggest British-born news site in the US according to Comscore data, also notched 70.4% year-on-year growth. All but one of the ten most-visited news sites in the US, and almost four in five of the top 50, grew their visits compared with September. Most of the top newsbrands in the US saw web traffic growth in October following two months of declines. Year-on-year the fastest-growing top ten news site was the AP, which saw 162.5% more visits in November 2024 than it did in the same month in 2023. Most of the ten most-visited news sites in the US benefitted from the November surge, with The New York Times (528.6 million, up 11% month-on-month), USA Today (203.5 million, up 9.8%) and CNN (460 million, up 8.2%) all notching notable gains. Three in five of the top 50 most-visited news sites in the US saw traffic grow compared with October — although there were some notable exceptions.
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The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (119.8 million visits) although it dropped one place to eleventh from tenth in the past month. The Independent was one of the fastest-growing news sites in the US in January, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking. The New York Times (456.7 million visits) remained the biggest newsbrand in the US by number of visits, followed by CNN (372.8 million), MSN, Fox News and People. At the other end of the list however, Microsoft news aggregator MSN (247.4 million visits) and News Corp’s New York Post (124.9 million) saw the biggest year-on-year slumps at 17% each. People (up 30% year-on-year), USA Today (up 20%) and Yahoo Finance (up 14%) saw the biggest increases in visits compared to February 2023.