Breitbart endures drop in websites traffic for fourth consecutive month

Breitbart Endures Sharp Drop in Website Traffic for Fourth Consecutive Month

By HOWARD POLSKIN, January 30, 2019

Breitbart’s traffic has fallen dramatically and it can’t seem to get up.

For the fourth consecutive month that I’ve been tracking unique visitors to the controversial conservative website using Comscore data, traffic has dropped off precipitously. (See December 2018 rankings of conservative websites here.)

December’s numbers tell the tale. The total unique visitors in December 2018 drooped 27% compared to December 2017. A year ago December, Breitbart pulled in 9,867,000 unique visitors. Last month, Breitbart attracted 7,167,000, which resulted in a drop of 2,700,000 uniques. Or, to put it another way, Breitbart lost more unique visitors in December than some prominent conservative websites totaled for the month like RushLimbaugh.com (1,290,000), Hannity.com (1,010,000) and Infowars (854,000).

In fairness to Breitbart, it’s not the only top 20 conservative website that’s tanked over the past four months. Newsmax has also put together of four consecutive months of double digit losses

But Breitbart is in the crosshairs because it has consistently ranked as the second-most trafficked conservative website for the 18 months that I’ve immersed myself in right-wing media. Fox News holds the top position by a far, pulling in at least 10 times the number of uniques compared to Breitbart. It’s not even a fair fight. As I’ve written before, Fox News is the 8,000-pound gorilla in the conservative news room. It casts the longest shadow.

It’s worth noting that Breitbart’s position as Robin to Fox’s Batman, suddenly appears tenuous. The Washington Examiner recorded 7,160,000 uniques in December. That’s a mere six thousand uniques behind Breitbart. The Daily Caller and The Western Journal are also coming on strong, each pulling in just shy of six million December uniques. The Western Journal in particular had December’s largest percentage gain of 316%.

What accounts for Breitbart’s decline? It’s hard to say exactly. New stories fill the website every day with loud and large headlines that command attention. I contacted Breitbart for comment and I did not receive a reply.

In the meantime, this month marks the one-year anniversary that Steve Bannon officially left Breitbart for good. Without the former Navy officer at the helm, has Breitbart become slightly lost at sea? Looking at its website traffic for the past four months, it’s easy to reach that conclusion. Stay tuned.