Why is that? Drudge is close to irrelevant now. Back in the late 90s he was ahead of his time, but his unimaginative website looks awful and dated now. He doesn't break news nor is he even on the cutting edge of the news cycle. Drudgereport now only matters during major election cycles, and even then, not so much. If no election is going on, his website is a complete waste of time.
Though very right wing, I do enjoy reading the site because they normally have several articles a day that are interesting, that aren't picked up by mainstream
Agreed - the peloton has since absorbed him. He's about as relevant as AOL. Last year? You mean like 2003? Mainstream news sites crush it in web traffic rankings. Actuallly so does Huffington post. Where are you getting this info?
I don't know if I'm doing this correctly. http://www.naa.org/blog/digitaledge/1/2008/03/Nielsen-Online-Names-Top-30-News-Sites.cfm The following is data from Nielsen Online on the top 30 sites in the “News” category based on February 2008 traffic. This data takes into account U.S. home and work Internet usage, and it shows both unique visitors to each brand or channel and sessions per person. For more information about the sourcing of this data, please visit www.netratings.com. Nielsen Online is providing these data sets to the Newspaper Association of America on a monthly basis. Top 30 Online Current Events & Global News Destinations, ranked by Sessions per Person Brand or channel; sessions per person; unique audience (000) 1. drudgereport.com; 19.9; 3,445 2. Daily Kos^; 8.9; 1,204 3. Fox News Digital Network; 8.3; 10,177 4. CNN Digital Network; 7.9; 37,181 5. AOL News; 7.7; 21,119 6. Yahoo! News; 7.4; 35,274 7. MSNBC Digital Network; 6.4; 34,013 8. ksl.com^; 6.0; 796 9. Breitbart.com; 5.3; 2,674 10. Google News; 5.3; 12,050 11. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division; 5.1; 13,998 12. NYTimes.com; 4.9; 18,975 13. Netscape; 4.8; 2,709 14. Townhall.com; 4.7; 1,152 15. Media General Newspapers; 4.6; 1,761 16. GTGI Network 4.5; 1,345 17. Star Tribune; 4.3; 2,108 18. TWC News Websites; 4.1; 840 19. NewsMax.com; 4.0; 4,054 20. Zwire^; 3.9; 1,089 21. Cox Newspapers; 3.9; 5,197 22. washingtonpost.com; 3.8; 10,441 23. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; 3.8; 1,259 24. The Buffalo News^; 3.7; 502 25. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 3.6; 1,472 26. MediaNews Group Newspapers; 3.5; 5,850 27. USATODAY.com; 3.5; 10,571 28. WorldNow 3.5; 10,588 29. IB Websites; 3.4; 7,565 30. St. Louis Post Dispatch^; 3.4; 1,022
I used to read Drudge, but then got a little bored with it due to its lack of proper news content. (think more sensationalistic news). But I recently visited the site again and it appeared the pages kept refreshing on me automatically. Does this increase page views to the site if the site owner builds a site with that feature?
Do you have something from mid-2009? Feb 2008 is right when Drudgereport would be at it's peak because of the heated & dramatic presidential primaries. But that's history. In Feb 2008, I sometimes discussed Drudgereport with friends. Other websites I browsed mentioned it. Right now, nobody I know gives a flip. I'm sure the site has had a major decline since then. He needs to break another major story to get back in the news.
you did it completely wrong. the list is ranked by sessions per person. to get true # of hits, you have to multiple unique audience X sessions per person that should put CNN on top then Fox way behind
So, basically, at the peak of the presidential primaries, Drudgereport.com had fewer unique hits than: 3. Fox News Digital Network; 8.3; 10,177 4. CNN Digital Network; 7.9; 37,181 5. AOL News; 7.7; 21,119 6. Yahoo! News; 7.4; 35,274 7. MSNBC Digital Network; 6.4; 34,013 10. Google News; 5.3; 12,050 11. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division; 5.1; 13,998 12. NYTimes.com; 4.9; 18,975 19. NewsMax.com; 4.0; 4,054 21. Cox Newspapers; 3.9; 5,197 22. washingtonpost.com; 3.8; 10,441 26. MediaNews Group Newspapers; 3.5; 5,850 27. USATODAY.com; 3.5; 10,571 28. WorldNow 3.5; 10,588 29. IB Websites; 3.4; 7,565 I see. You have made your argument...?
You really think an simple auto-refresh header (a one-line) command that any simpleton can do, would fool advertisers? Unique views are not tabulated this way. Any guy with a website and "auto-refresh" and leave his computer on an get millions and millions of "hits". Please believe me, auto-refresh is not some part of the right-wing conspiracy. It's been around for ages...
Auto refresh does not increase sessions per person. His site is popular. So what? It is not inconceivable that his site is popular. Unless, he has developed some sort of technical innovation to fool web-metric gathering that all other websites on the Internet have not figured out.
Refreshing advertisements causes new advertisements to load, which means more money for the site. It's frowned upon, but I am sure Drudge is not using Google for its advertising. It's not a right-wing conspiracy as much as a great idea to make money.