U S. News: Top U.S. News Today

The biggest year-on-year drop among the top ten was seen at Gannett’s USA Today, which shed 17% of its March 2024 traffic to attract 134.7 million visits last month. Three in five of the top 50 news websites in the US recorded year-on-year growth, with the biggest percentage increase seen at sports news site Athlon Sports. Rival title The Mirror, which is yet to feature in the top 50 US news websites, grew 631% year on year to 15.1 million visits in April 2025 according to Similarweb data. Substack rose to 19th position with growth of 42.5% year on year to 67.7 million visits in the US for its network of newsletter-driven websites. Only 15 out of the top 50 news websites in the US grew traffic year on year in May, according to the latest data from Similarweb. More than half (29) of the 50 biggest news websites in the US saw a month-on-month decline.

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Business publisher Forbes (115.4 million, up 41.5%) saw the fastest rise, followed by People magazine (144.6 million, up 14.2%), The New York Times (up 8.9%) and the New York Post (142.1 million, up 8.1%). 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 (23 million, down 63.8% year-over-year). Fox News (278.4 million, down 3.7%), aggregator MSN (214.3 million, down 8.2%) and the New York Post (127.9 million, down 8.7%) lost traffic, meanwhile.

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Australian-based Science Alert saw the highest growth month on month, up 60% to 23.4 million visits. Seven of the top ten websites saw month-on-month growth, and People recorded the highest jump among these, up 14%, followed by MSN (up 8% to 148.7 million visits) and Yahoo Finance (up 4% to 133.2 million). Among the top ten US news sites, only celebrity news site People saw year-on-year growth in December, up 5% to 151.9 million visits. Visits to the Arena Group site were up 184% year on year and 130% month on month to 19.5 million in December, according to the latest Similarweb data. Men’s lifestyle magazine Men’s Journal recorded the highest year-on-year and month-on-month growth among the top 50 news websites in the US in December. Press Gazette’s monthly ranking of the top 50 news websites in the US, using Similarweb data.

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On the other end of the scale the fastest year-on-year traffic losses were seen by the Los Angeles Times (25.8 million, down 30% on October 2023), the Daily Mail (104.1 million, down 22.8%) and Fox News. The fastest-growing top-ten site month-on-month was USA Today, followed by aggregator Google News (122.4 million, up 8.6%) and People. At the start of October the site deployed a new paywall, which does not appear to have immediately hurt its web visits. 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 Dynamic Sports well as eight of the top ten.

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.

Fox News saw the biggest slump at 14% with visits down to 249.9 million despite a busy news cycle in the US with national elections later this year. Instead fastest-growing was M Live (up 27% month-on-month), followed by CBS News (84 million, up 26%), Axios (up 21%), and technology specialist The Verge (up 17%). Newsweek continued a strong run of growth to retake its spot as the fastest-growing news website in the US in April, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking. CNN (419.2 million visits, up 3%) and the New York Times (503.4 million, up 3%) also saw growth, albeit more modest, compared to April. Visits to the popular magazine’s website were up 18% month-on-month to 165.3 million, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb.

• Fox News and Yahoo Finance (155.9 million) were respectively flat and up 3% compared with last year.
• Meanwhile, legislatures in several Democratic-led states pressed forward with bills aimed at blocking or discouraging ICE facilities.
• In August, just five of the top 50 sites had year-on-year growth but in September 18 had an increase in visits compared to a year earlier.
• The New York Post (down 33% to 97.7 million visits) and USA Today (down 32% to 125.4 million) had the second and third biggest year-on-year declines within the top ten sites in October.
• These include 59 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in the categories for which we can compete.

The Gateway Pundit and another site supportive of Donald Trump, Breitbart, were also among the fastest growers year-on-year, up 54% and 26% respectively. The biggest year-on-year decline in the top ten was seen at aggregator MSN (196.4 million, down 8%) and USA Today (also down 8%). The shallowest fall in the top ten was seen at People magazine (150.6 million), which nonetheless lost 5% of its traffic.

British news site The Independent (34.8 million), which claimed in November to have become the biggest British-born news site in the US according to Comscore data, also notched 70.4% year-on-year growth. All but one of the ten most-visited news sites in the US, and almost four in five of the top 50, grew their visits compared with September. Most of the top newsbrands in the US saw web traffic growth in October following two months of declines. Year-on-year the fastest-growing top ten news site was the AP, which saw 162.5% more visits in November 2024 than it did in the same month in 2023. Most of the ten most-visited news sites in the US benefitted from the November surge, with The New York Times (528.6 million, up 11% month-on-month), USA Today (203.5 million, up 9.8%) and CNN (460 million, up 8.2%) all notching notable gains. Three in five of the top 50 most-visited news sites in the US saw traffic grow compared with October — although there were some notable exceptions.