Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report
There's been a "historic crash in viewership" for the web's most popular news aggregator, the Drudge Report, according to reports.
The famed headline writer himself, Matt Drudge, has denied he's made any significant changes.
But many have noted the tone and content of the site, which made its reputation on the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton administration and since then became a favorite for conservatives, has become harshly and relentlessly critical of President Trump.
For months, speculation has been rampant as to the reason for the 180-degree change, but no explanation has been forthcoming from the central figure.
ZeroHedge reported the Drudge Report website "continues what has been a historic crash in viewership in August."
"The site's traffic in August fell to 63 million readers, down from 66 million in May, according to True Pundit. Just months ago, in September 2019, the site was regularly garnering 95 million readers. Comscore data also put Drudge's viewers at 1.488 million unique visitors in July, down 38% from July of 2019, according to The Wrap."
In August 2019, said the report, the site had "well over 100 million" readers, but the recent "slide" has been "after many conservatives, including President Donald Trump, have asserted that the site had given up its long held conservative ideology."
The Wrap noted Trump has been critical of Drudge recently, "and while it's subjective to argue whether the right-leaning news aggregator has moved away from positive Trump stories, one thing is true: Drudge's readership is down a whopping 38% from last year."
Comscore reported 1.488 million unique visitors in July 2020. In July 2019, it was 2.399 million.
Trump commented: "Our people have all left Drudge. He is a confused MESS, has no clue what happened."
The Wrap also noted that Similarweb reported the Drudge Report had 63.22 million visits in August 2020, down 3.26% from the previous month. But the site had as many as 96 million visits in July 2019.
The Washington Times reported Drudge has recently denied there's been any significant traffic change this year.
That was at the beginning of summer, when Trump had unleashed an earlier round of criticism against Drudge.
Drudge told CNN, "The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report's 26-year history."
The TruePundit blog said: "Not even massive street riots, hordes of lawless vagrants burning cities throughout the United States and a dead-heat presidential election could help Matt Drudge’s spiraling news site in August."
The site said Drudge's "monthly traffic in August was 63 million readers, according to similarweb.com analytics, down from 66 million in May. The spiral continues. In September 2019 Drudge was pulling close to 95 million readers and well over 100 million in August 2019, one year ago. That’s roughly a 40 percent decline in clicks/traffic in a year, marking Drudge’s lowest volume of web visitors literally in decades."
The blog pointed out that last fall there were drops in Drudge web traffic of nearly 18% over September and October.
"News consumers here have clearly spoken and Drudge appears to be in serious trouble with these numbers. He is bleeding former loyalists and often, regaining them is an elusive and expensive task," the report said at the time.
The blog back then pointed out that Drudge's web numbers "are on a parallel trajectory" to what happened to Enron's stock.
Big League Politics said 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."
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