Visits to the US websites of Fox News, the New York Post and The Sun fell double digits in September.
They saw the three biggest month-on-month falls of any publishers on Press Gazette’s list of the top 50 news sites in the US that month.
The New York Post and Sun US have otherwise seen robust growth recently, with The Sun US in particular scoring a 90% year-on-year increase in visits.
[Read more: US Sun bosses say ‘we’ve got incredibly ambitious aspirations’ as early work pays off in traffic and profit]
But not so Fox News, which has suffered a 17% drop in traffic year-on-year.
Press Gazette reached out to the three sites, as well as two others that have suffered – Insider and Buzzfeed – to get their take on what caused the drop.
The Sun US
The Sun US might have the most flattering reason: they just had such a good August that their September couldn’t live up.
Similarweb data puts The Sun US on 55.3 million hits in August versus 44.6 million in September. But that’s still up on May (38.2 million), June (33.7 million) and July (41.1 million), over which time the site appears to experienced a summer dip. The site appears to continue its recovery, pulling in 54.4 million visits in the month to 28 October.
A Sun spokesperson said as much: “August was The US Sun's strongest month ever and we drove record page views.
“September saw a slight month on month decline, but crucially was still our second best ever month. [Note: this clashes with Similarweb’s figures, which put March 2022 as the second best.]
“Monthly fluctuation will always occur, especially in a growing business, but the trajectory of The US Sun is one of rapid growth.”
Steve Paine, a manager at search visibility index Sistrix, noted that although The Sun US’ page visits had declined month-over-month, its visibility on Google had remained strong even following the search engine’s recent updates.
“The-sun.com has grown during the period of loss by foxnews.com, either as a result of its own SEO strategy, or by picking up slack left by foxnews.com. There's evidence of strength in their sports section though.” (It is unclear how far The Sun US’ audiences and that of Fox News overlap.)
Fox News
Fox News’ 17% fall in its year-on-year visits has been accompanied by a tumble in its search visibility: its site has lost approximately half its score on Sistrix’ visibility index since Google’s Product Reviews Update and Core Update last month.
[Read more: Google's latest core algorithm change hits major news publishers harder than 'helpful content' update]
Paine said: "Foxnews.com have seen continuous losses in organic visibility over the last three years and the huge percentage drop during the September Google update is another signal that their content is not successful in Google search.”
But by its own reckoning, Fox relies far less than many other news sites on search and social traffic for its visits: Similarweb puts its average visit duration at seven and a half minutes and pages per visit at 3.67.
Fox News spokesperson Caley Cronin emphasised this, saying year-on-year the site’s pages per visit were up 14% and minutes per visit were up 11%. She also said that in the month to 25 October, the site’s traffic had only dropped 3%, the same decline seen by CNN and Google News.
Cronin also said that compared with March, when numerous sites experienced peak visits because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Fox News had only experienced a 23% traffic drop, whereas CNN and The New York Times had experienced drops of 27% and 34%, respectively.
[Read more: Unprecedented reader interest in Ukraine as publishers shift to covering longer war]
[Read more: Global interest in Ukraine drives record usage of Reuters content]
[Read more: Channel 4 News reaches record social media audience with Ukraine war explainers]
Cronin also noted the NYT had experienced a major and sustained traffic boost from its incorporation of Wordle earlier this year.
New York Post
“Nypost.com do appear to be addressing search with their articles, reviews and informative content, but even this has taken a huge hit in the last three months. Like foxnews.com, the content there isn't being chosen for the top organic search results positions by Google."
Comparators: Insider and Buzzfeed
Neither Insider nor Buzzfeed responded to Press Gazette’s requests for information on why they might have seen traffic declines.
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