The world’s biggest news websites collectively regained traffic in July after their performances tailed off in previous months as interest in Covid-19 dwindled.
New website viewing figures for last month show that Mail Online and Fox News made up ground on their ‘broadsheet’ rivals, The Guardian and the New York Times, after losing out in the spring.
The BBC remained the English-speaking world’s largest news website, claiming more than 1bn visits for the fifth month in a row.
The top ten list of English-language news websites from the UK and US (below) is based on figures and rankings from online data business SimilarWeb. The figures show total visits rather than unique users.
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Press Gazette reported in April how Mail Online and Fox News had fallen behind the Guardian and the New York Times respectively in March as interest in coronavirus peaked.
The latest SimilarWeb figures show that Mail Online has reasserted its position ahead of the Guardian, while Fox News is gaining ground on the New York Times.
Over the last six months, Yahoo’s news and finance websites – added together – and CNN have enjoyed the biggest gains in traffic.
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In total, the ten websites in our list – which includes Google News, as well as websites that aggregate much of their content, MSN and Yahoo – attracted 5.4bn clicks through July, up from 5.2bn in June but down from 6.3bn in March when interested in Covid-19 peaked.
English-speaking world’s biggest news websites during Covid-19
| News sites | Feb 20 | Mar 20 | Apr 20 | May 20 | Jun 20 | Jul 20 |
| BBC (.co.uk and .com) | 969m | 1.305bn | 1.148bn | 1.056bn | 1.023bn | 1.066bn |
| MSN | 737.5m | 857.5m | 915m | 799.5m | 776m | 842m |
| CNN | 607.5m | 931.5m | 870m | 731.5m | 758m | 753m |
| Google News | 483.5m | 630m | 617m | 570m | 527m | 561m |
| Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance | 344m | 529.5m | 531m | 484.5m | 483m | 514m |
| New York Times | 328m | 569.5m | 444m | 382m | 397m | 391.6m |
| Fox News | 336m | 412.5m | 385m | 346.5m | 370m | 388.1m |
| Mail Online | 314.5m | 371.5m | 365.5m | 331.5m | 318.5m | 342.8m |
| The Guardian | 287.5m | 435.5m | 389.5m | 335.5m | 313m | 287.2m |
| Washington Post | 150m | 276.5m | 227m | 205m | 218.5m | 215.3m |
| Total | 4.6bn | 6.3bn | 5.9bn | 5.2bn | 5.2bn | 5.4bn |
The below graph shows how the largest original journalism news websites – i.e. not Google News, Yahoo or MSN – have performed since January.
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