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August 12, 2020updated 30 Sep 2022 9:29am

July readership figures for world’s biggest news websites: Mail Online and Fox News make up ground on ‘broadsheet’ rivals

By William Turvill

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.

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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