The Drudge Report’s monthly traffic has cratered in recent months, with longtime viewers of the nominally conservative news aggregators abandoning it in response to founder Matt Drudge’s decision to convert it into another mainstream media anti-Donald Trump news site.
At the Drudge Report’s peak, it received one billion hits, a massive figure in the world of online political publishing. In July, it received 800,000,000- still a very large level of site traffic, but significant in its decline of two hundred million from the site’s peak.
The Drudge Report received 63 million unique viewers in September, a drastic downturn from the whopping 93 million views it received in September 2019. The news aggregator received as many as 85 million views as recently as March, suggesting Drudge’s longtime audience has abandoned him recently.
Traffic on political websites usually increases in the advance of an election, indicating that the Drudge Report viewers are intent on turning it off.
Drudge’s recent decline has enshrined Breitbart as the most-viewed conservative website, in terms of internet traffic. Breitbart appears to have overtaken the Drudge Report in June.
The once Trump supporter highlights a vein of predictable and dull pro-Joe Biden content, usually curated from corporate fake news websites such as MSNBC and CNN. He’s increasingly sought to downplay expressly political content, perhaps hoping to preserve what remains of his conservative audience.
Some have speculated that the evasive Drudge was paid off by major oligarchs to revamp his website, but his declining traffic figures may outweigh any reward offered to him by liberal financial interests.
There are other great news aggregators that fill the void left by Drudge’s neoliberal makeover. thelibertydaily.com is a great news aggregator, as is bonginoreport.com.