In terms of annual growth Athlon Sports and The Cooldown again topped the charts, with both seeing greater than 300% year-on-year growth. The New York Times extended its lead over CNN has the most popular news website in the US according to Press Gazette’s latest top-50 ranking. The US Sun has been affected by Google’s algorithm changes and reduced the size of its newsroom in September to target fewer key content areas. A third of the top 50 lost traffic year-over-year, with the largest decline seen at the US version of the UK’s un-paywalled Sun tabloid Mind Universe (23 million, down 63.8% year-over-year).
Yahoo Sports
Month-on-month New York Post (149.4 million, up 7%), USA Today (up 3%) and MSN (263.2 million, up 2%) were fastest-growing. It was followed by Gannett’s flagship newsbrand USA Today (148.1 million, up 25% compared to April 2023), Visits to the news magazine’s website were up 149% year-on-year to 90.5 million, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb. The sites in the list are based on Similarweb’s classification of news and media publishers, although Press Gazette refines the list to exclude some sites with a less news-based focus. The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking climbing one place into tenth (117.8 million visits), while the BBC was in rank 11 (112.7 million).
The biggest month-on-month increase in June was at The Times of Israel, which saw its visits almost double to 23.7 million in the US (up 98%). The other newsbrands to report month-on-month growth were Newsbreak (up 6%), SFGate (4%), USA Today (3%), and LA Times and India Times (both 1%). Similarly six sites reported month-on-month growth for August, with this hugely increasing to 35 in September.
CNN (425 million) remains the most-visited news site in the US despite an 11.8% year-on-year decrease in traffic — the only fall among the top ten besides Fox News (258.1 million), which lost 22.5% of its October 2023 traffic. Thirty websites in the top 50 also saw their visits grow year-on-year in October, as well as eight of the top ten. The Los Angeles Times (23.7 million visits) and Washington Post (102.4 million) saw the sixth and eighth largest drops, falling by 7.9% and 6.6% respectively compared with October. Among the top ten most-visited sites specifically, all but two sites saw some year-on-year growth. The biggest traffic pullback in the top ten was at USA Today (143.6 million, down 29.4%), followed by CNN (356.6 million, down 22.5%) and Fox News (253.6 million, down 17%). Some 32 sites grew their total number of website visits year on year, according to Similarweb.
June 2025
- Eight people have been killed and 25 injured in the shootings at a school and home in a rural community in western Canada, police say.
- It was followed by two News Corp titles, foxnews.com (269.1 million visits) and nypost.com (160.8 million), which were both up 8% month-on-month.
- The job market thawed somewhat last month as U.S. employers added 130,000 jobs.
- Was 16th-Century aristocrat Jane Boleyn a treacherous, “sex-mad” spy – or was she a convenient scapegoat?
- Among the 50 most-visited online newsbrands in the US in February, 11 increased their traffic compared with the month before, while 19 saw decreases of 10% or more.
While some say Facebook referral traffic has returned this year, others complain that the addition of AI-written summaries to Google search results has deeply impacted click-through rates to articles. Publishers have complained in recent years about falling referral traffic from Google and Facebook. The Times of Israel fell back out of the top 50 after its visits almost doubled in June to enter in 43rd place. Meanwhile the vast majority (44) saw fewer visits than they did a year earlier in July 2024. Some content remains free to all users regardless of whether they have hit the paywall, including select global breaking news stories. The BBC launched a dynamic paywall for users in the US at the end of June, charging $8.99 (£6.55) per month or $49.99 (£36.40) per year.
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The BBC visits the Iranian capital for the first time since authorities used unprecedented force to put down protests last month. Visits to the Gannett-owned site were up by 32% year-on-year to 151.4 million – echoing its year-on-year growth rate last month. The Independent is one of several UK newsbrands along with The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Express and the BBC that have recently put focus on expansion in the US. The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (107.7 million visits) in tenth, one place ahead of the BBC (101 million).
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