Right-Wing News Websites Continue to Lose Audience;
Traffic Rises at Only Two Top Outlets
October 25, 2022, New York, NY – Traffic continued to decline at most right-wing news websites according to TheRighting’s exclusive analysis of September 2022 mobile and desktop traffic based on Comscore data. The analysis revealed that there were decreases in year-over-year (YOY) unique visitors to 18 conservatives news websites in TheRighting’s monthly top 20 chart. The only two websites that posted gains were the Washington Examiner and Epoch Times.
Foxnews.com continued to hemorrhage YOY traffic for the seventh straight month. It was down 23% in September. However, it ranked as the most trafficked right-wing website with nearly 74 million unique visitors. Once again, the Epoch Times ranked as the second-most-trafficked right-wing news website, followed by the Washington Examiner.
“Right-wing news sites are unable to shake their traffic malaise,” said Howard Polskin, President and Chief Curator, TheRighting. “The big news events of September 2022 such as DeSantis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Hurricane Ian failed to produce a surge in unique visitors. However, the midterm elections should drive more eyeballs to all news websites next month.”
Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Conservative News Websites for September 2022
(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)
Winners
· Washington Examiner (+36%)
· Epoch Times (+30%)
Losers
· CNS News (-68%)
· The Federalist (-60%)
· Breitbart (-58%)
The New York Times brand bucked the downward trend by posting an 8% YOY increase. However, the two other mainstream news brands TheRighting follows saw unique visitors sag in September. CNN attracted 122 million unique visitors but its YOY traffic fell 10%. The Washington Post slipped 15% vs September 2021.
The Truth About Truth Social Traffic
Donald Trump’s Truth Social website, which launched in February 2022, saw its unique visitors decline from 4 million in August to 3.3 million in September. YOY comparison will not be available until February 2023.
Here are the September 2022 unique visitors for the five conservative-friendly social media platforms TheRighting follows:
· Rumble (8,391,000; -2% vs year ago)
· Truth Social (3,375,000; year-ago data NA)
· MeWe (1,128,000; -20% vs year ago)
· Gettr (689,000; +50% vs year ago)
· Parler (471,000; -48% 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.
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, September 2022, U.S.
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