95% of Top Conservative Websites Post Audience Declines in June

Only Newsmax Registers a Year-Over-Year Increase in Unique Visitors

Traffic Down 92% at DonaldJTrump.com  

July 22,  2021, New York, NY – Nineteen of the top 20 websites in TheRighting’s monthly rankings of conservative media outlets experienced year-over-year (YOY) decreases in unique visitors according to our exclusive analysis of June 2021 mobile and desktop traffic based on Comscore data.  Only Newsmax experienced a YOY gain in unique visitors, rising 53% from 3,422,000 in June 2020 to 5,230,000 in June 2021.  

YOY traffic to DonaldJTrump.com, the website of the former president, dropped 92% from 16,660,000 in June 2020 to 1,312,000 in 2021.  Since TheRighting began tracking traffic to the Trump website, unique visitors have declined 99% (April 2021) and 72% (May 2021). 

Foxnews.com remained the highest-ranked conservative website in TheRighting’s survey with 79,266,000 unique visitors in June 2021, although it recorded its seventh straight month of audience declines (-26%).

“Lower traffic generally means less news volatility. The sagging traffic numbers for news websites in June – conservative, mainstream and liberal  — reflect a more stable current events landscape with gentler political rhetoric and less alarming news about the pandemic especially when compared to the calamitous summer of 2020,” said Howard Polskin, President and Curator, TheRighting.  “A year ago we had demonstrations in the streets as well as a deadly pandemic and heated presidential election. That drove heavy volumes of traffic to news websites.”

Leaders and Losers Among Top 20 Conservative News Websites for June 2021

(by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)

Leader

·      Newsmax (+53%%)

Losers

·      CNS News (-90%)

·      PJ Media (-83%)

·      Washington Times (-76%)

Some of the biggest mainstream news brands also experienced decreases in their YOY June traffic.  Unique visitors fell at  The New York Times brand (-34%), Washingtonpost.com      (-28%) and CNN.com (-20%).  

Parler Talk

After months of strong audience growth, Parler experienced a sharp reversal in June, losing more than a million unique visitors compared to June 2020.  The number of unique visitors for three conservative-friendly social media sites for  June 2021 are as follows:

·      Rumble (7,914,000; +256% vs year ago) 

·      Mewe (1,811,000; +120% vs year ago) 

·      Parler (433,000; -73% vs year ago) 

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, June 2021, U.S.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article and chart incorrectly stated that Foxnews.com had 13,835,000 unique visitors in June 2021 resulting in an audience decline of 34%.

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