U.S. Newswire: Is Era of Right-Wing Site Popularity Over?

[Mark E. Smith]

Web Traffic to Washington Times, Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh.com Is Down; Is Era of Right-Wing Site Popularity Over?

WASHINGTON -- An odd thing seems to have happened to the mighty right-wing talking head juggernaut. They are still talking, but fewer people seem to be listening -- at least on the Internet.

Alexa.com -- http://alexa.com -- which is owned and operated by Amazon.com, tracks on-line usage for all Web sites, large and small. At Alexa.com, you can check a site's activity up to the minute, or follow its trail back for many years.

A U.S. Politics Today, we thought it might be interesting to see how the right-wing media machine was doing. Not well, it turns out.

During the past three months, for instance, http://rushlimbaugh.com traffic has declined 18 percent. He still huffs and puffs away on the radio, but advertisers might want to double check the size of his audience. If the bottom has dropped out on him online, it likely has had a similar trend line with his radio show.

Even Fox News, that gold standard of right-wing media, is down 13 percent. Here are the numbers:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=www.foxnews.com

(More: Ann Coulter's site down 10%, Bill O'Reilly's down 40% in three months, Townhall.com down 24%,
Washing Times web site down 27%, and poor old Matt Drudge's site down 21%.)

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=68506

America has grown sick of rightwing nuts.

[MADem]

1. America has grown tired of HATE for breakfast, lunch and dinner

It's one thing to enjoy it as a side dish, I suppose, but they are starting to see the effects of BushCo hitting them in their wallets and gas tanks. All that energy spent hating isn't making things better for them in their day-to-day lives.

[intheflow]

4. Sick of hatred and FEAR.

No one can survive long on such a stingy diet.

[rinsd]

2. A little context and a premature conclusion

Here is Alexa's explanation of the percentages being quoted

"Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa expresses reach as number of users per million. Alexa's one-week and three-month average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. The reach rank is a ranking of all sites based solely on their reach. The three-month changes are determined by comparing a site's current reach and reach rank with its values from three month ago."

Reach rank is a big factor here and may be a bit misleading when it comes to percentage change(ie: change in rank could be large while actual growth of traffic does not necessarily have to also be). It seemed that most of the sites traffic numbers were up and down but basically in a consistent range.

"Could it be that Internet users are getting tired of political sites in general? Maybe so. But http://moveon.org is up 13 percent in the same period."

This actually doesn't prove anything. Look at moveon's traffic numbers they are okay but not exactly domninating. But if more liberal sites are growing why DU is down 9%. DialyKos is down 10%. DU get about 10 times more traffic than moveon and DailyKos gets about 30 times(though those numbers are according to Alexa so who knows how vaild they really are). Some good news with a caveat(ie: my mistrust of Alexa figures), freerepublic's numbers are down 19% and their traffic looks like it has ebbed(significantly) in the last 6 months. Again these are Alexa figures so who the hell knows how accurate they are.

Drudge and the rest of the rw go up and down. Their charts actually look like the needle getting pegged on a lie detector test. :evilgrin:

This does annoy me though. No investigation beyond a cursory one to prove the results that were desired in the first place.

So the moral of the story is it appears some political websites are losing traffic to non-political websites but a much more in depth investigation is needed.

On edit: I know I should provide links for all these numbers but alexa is going a bit haywire right now. It took me forever just to look up 10 websites

[truthisfreedom]

3. and kkkarl doesn't have time to think up some new sophomore college tricks

that will get America's attention before the fall. he's so stuck in negativeland that he can't do anything for repukes now.

we're all sick of it. it took the majority of people a while to realize how sickening it is, but they're coming around. woohoo!

i saw the old brown huge "NO WAR IN IRAQ" signs popping up in my neighborhood last week. i think it's about time to put mine back out after all these years.

[SoCalDem]

5. Sum-sum-summertime

Even righties like to go outside and play occasionally.. :)

although I do sense a shift in the wind.. anyone who has even had an adolescent child recognizes bald-face lies, and sooner or later they tire of being lied to and send the kid to his/her room.. perhaps they have sent junior & his pals to the woodshed and just are tired of the lies :)_

[applegrove]

6. Maybe they are tired of being lied to. And infantalized.

[Ezlivin]

7. Now that they've killed Net Neutrality, soon we'll all be offline

Okay, that's a pretty harsh statement, but knowing these bastards I believe it is their goal to quell discussion (formerly known as Free Speech).

What would DU look like if your local ISP decided to add a surcharge for accessing a site it had deemed "politically subversive"?

Not that I'm paranoid or anything....

[saltpoint]

8. Not sure exactly how to account for the trend, but I sure like the

direction.

Most of the right-wing hate hosts are mean-spirited blowhards.

Good riddance to their once-dominant ratings.

[MadMaddie]

9. Americans can't afford to go on Vacation because

of gas prices car and air....they have more time to pay attention...grocery prices are increasing.....

[struggle4progress]

10. Hah! Compare DU to Rush:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=max&size=medium&compare_sites=www.rushlimbaugh.com&y=p&url=www.democraticunderground.com#top

[krkaufman]

12. Conclusions are questionable

Maybe everyone is just saturated. Check Air America's numbers. Kind of in a freefall since early this year.

[calimary]

11. All I can say is

:nopity:

[hollowdweller]

13. In my experience opinions have also become more diverse

I like hunting, hiking and shooting and knife collecting so I go to a lot of those type forums. For about the last 2 years sometimes I was the only person representing the democratic or anti war type of view.

Seems like since Jan I'm not alone anymore. There's a lot of people, even independants speaking out and questioning the war, and the return to the Gilded Age. Quite a few of these people still don't have any respect for the Democrats, I mean it's hard to reverse x years of talk radio or right wing swiftboating, but on the issues they are mostly with the Dems, or at least what Kos called the Libertarian Dems

[RangerSmith]

21. I really

think what you are talking about and seeing is the reality of the political climate today.

It's just like it was during Abscam. People are not happy with who is in charge at any level. The Dems stand to benefit the most right now, IMHO.

[teknomanzer]

14. looks like all political sites are currently down...

but right wing sites are sinking pretty fast. hmmmm....

[zonkers]

15. Just looked at DU.... why the crazy spike in May?

[HereSince1628]

16. It's probably the uproar over the Leopold/Truthout "Rove is Indicted"

story don't you think?

[zonkers]

17. Yup.

[BlueIris]

18. Maybe that's why I've actually been able to get useful info from searches

again. Why, Google has even been working somewhat more normally for me recently!

[InsultComicDog]

19. They're the ones in power

It's getting harder for them to find others to blame for their own screw-ups.

Check that.

It's getting harder for them to convince the public that anyone else is responsible.

[yurbud]

20. good news is always welcome for a change

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Maybe DUers stopped going to those sites for shock value

That would put a hole in their numbers.

[Hosnon]

23. Tried to check out Alexa.com's ranks...but they don't tally...wonder why?

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. Let me say if for OldLeftyLawyer since she isn't here to say it forherself

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

[lpbk2713]

25. It's true. Just look at the sponsors they get for these idiotic shows.

I spent a few minutes recently listening to the Limbore Dog n Pony Show not long after his Dominican sex vacation. And it stuck me how odd the various commercials were for his show, and bear in mind he is one of the most listened to among the RWers so it seems like he should get the best. There was a used lumber yard, some obvious crook selling some sort of gold scheme, some yo-yo selling some kind of snake oil that was supposed to make you a whole new person and several others that were equally bizarre. If this is the best he can do in the way of sponsors then the end must surely be near.



Yes it's true. The conservative movement is indeed dying. We owe Smirky the AWOL Boy a deep debt of gratitude for all he has done for us in single-handedly destroying his own party. I would suggest to the rethugs that they change their icon from an elephant to a dinosaur.

[skids]

28. That's just targetted advertising...

I mean if you are trying to rip someone off, you want to reach the most gullible audience you can, right? :+

[lpbk2713]

29. True. They can't be real bright.

Damn shame the sheepies don't realize they're being had so many different ways. After all, there's Limbore, the snake oil salesmen, the rethuglican party, Boosh and his co-conspirators, Faux News and on and on. There must be a good deal of profit to be made out of them because there are so many trying to get them to listen.

[PATRICK]

26. In WWII Nazi Germany people would have stopped

to this garbage for the same reasons. In fact they probably would have yanked a couple and sent their useless a&&es to the Russian front. The real story is in the increase of blogs like ours for the same natural reasons. We are still free.

[jpgray]

27. Pelphase!

:headbang:

[durrrty libby]

30. K & R ,,,,Love it....Hope it continues n/t

[Rex]

31. They were never popular, most people just put up with their shit.

I think today people just don't buy the propaganda. They did 3 years ago and loved watching Clinton 'get his' (what is it with people who hate intellectuals) during his last term in office.

People are fickle, nothing last forever, trends are just that.

[Blue_Tires]

32. Drudge?!?!? people still click on his site?

he is soooooooo 1998