• by Sara Guaglione , December 26, 2017

Seventeen of the top 20 conservative websites tracked by TheRighting, a media company that aggregates articles and content from right-wing media outlets, experienced declines in visits in November 2017, compared to the same month a year prior.

Founded this spring, TheRighting aims to help inform mainstream and liberal audiences about stories and conservative viewpoints not on their radar. The company analyzes data available from SimilarWeb, a digital marketing intelligence and website traffic platform.

The top five conservative websites with the highest total November 2017 visits were Foxnews.com, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Infowars and TheBlaze. Those five sites fell in total global visits in November 2017, compared to November 2016, by -3%, -11%, -20%, -48%, and -12%, respectively.

“Compared to last month, November 2016 was characterized by a much more robust news environment focused on the election of Donald J. Trump and it drew large audiences to websites across the political spectrum,” stated Howard Polskin, president and chief curator at TheRighting.  

“The level of interest in our political landscape last month, while high, just didn’t match the intensity from a year ago,” he added.

Those top five conservative news sites also dipped in traffic in November 2017 compared to  the month prior.

Of the 20 sites analyzed, the websites with the steepest percentage decreases were WND (-56%), Infowars (-48%) and Rushlimbaugh.com (-45%).

But three conservative websites marked gains in year-over-year November visits: One America News Network (+99%), The Washington Examiner (+16%) and The Weekly Standard (+7%).  

TheRighting also found lower November year-over-year visits in three prominent mainstream media sites it examined: The New York Times (-22%), CNN (-14%) and The Washington Post (-11%).

The frenzied news cycle surrounding a presidential election seems to have benefited both conservative and mainstream news sites. Keeping up the momentum and driving increases in traffic after an election has passed has proven to be a challenge.