Traffic Sags to Most Right-Wing Websites as News Fatigue Sets in

Only the Washington Examiner and the Epoch Times Post Gains

September 29,  2022, New York, NY – The vast majority of right-wing news websites tracked by TheRighting experienced year-over-year declines in unique visitors according to TheRighting’s exclusive analysis of August 2022 mobile and desktop traffic based on Comscore data. There were decreases in unique visitors to 18 conservatives news websites in TheRighting’s monthly top 20 chart.  Only the Washington Examiner and Epoch times posted gains. 

Foxnews.com continued to lead all right-wing news websites tallying 71,944,000 million unique visitors.  However, its YOY traffic sagged 21%, its sixth straight month of losses.  The Epoch Times ranked as the second-most-trafficked right-wing news website, followed by the Washington Examiner.

“The significant drop in traffic was a surprise because I expected the August 8 Mar-a-Lago FBI search to drive intense reader interest,” said Howard Polskin, President and Chief Curator, TheRighting. “I can only attribute this to Trump News Fatigue Syndrome. Audiences seem to have a harder time following every new development in the political soap opera that has consumed the country for six years. So they begin to tune out and we’re seeing the softening of interest in the August traffic data.”

Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Conservative News Websites for August 2022

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

Winners

·      Epoch Times (+57%)

·      Washington Examiner (+43%)

Losers

·      PJ Media (-69%)

·      Daily Signal (-67%)

·      Breitbart (-59%)

The New York Times was the only mainstream news brands TheRighting follows that posted a YOY increase in unique visitors for August 2022 (+4%).  The Washington Post dipped 16% decline vs August 2021.  CNN tallied 116 million unique visitors in August 2022 to lead all news brands in TheRighting’s survey, but it was still down 16% from August 2021.

The Truth About Truth Social Traffic

Donald Trump’s Truth Social website, which launched in February 2022,  continued to experience robust growth. While YOY comparisons will not be available until next year, Truth Social grew 60% from July 2022 to August 2022.

Here are the August 2022 unique visitors for the five conservative-friendly social media platforms TheRighting follows:

·      Rumble (8,282,000; -24% vs year ago)

·      Truth Social  (4,024,000; year-ago data NA)

·      MeWe (1,112,000; -33% vs year ago)

·      Gettr (1,099,000; +9% vs year ago)

·      Parler (137,000; -82% 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, August 2022, U.S.

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