September was a busier news month, including the assassination of right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk. Syndication website MSN saw the biggest drop year on year among the top ten by more than a third (39.5% to 144 million visits). Athlon Sports followed Forbes in year-on-year traffic decline with a drop in visits of 48% to 290.3 million, along with AP News (down 46% to 78.5 million visits). Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips told Press Gazette last month the brand has lost traffic to articles it was previously known for, such as “Who’s the richest person in the world?
- Just five of the top 50 US websites saw year-on-year traffic growth in August 2025, according to the latest data from Similarweb.
- Meanwhile the vast majority (44) saw fewer visits than they did a year earlier in July 2024.
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- The site received 374% more visits in August 2024 than in August 2023, reaching 29.6 million.
- Among the top ten sites in the US, three were up compared to June 2024 (New York Times, People, BBC and Google News) and seven saw an increase compared to May.
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The biggest month-on-month decline was seen at NBC News, dropping 30% to 67.7 million visits. The New York Post (down 33% to 97.7 million visits) and USA Today (down 32% to 125.4 million) had the second and third biggest year-on-year declines within the top ten sites in October. In total 35 sites saw month-on-month decline, with Variety decreasing the most (down 22% to 17.4 million visits), followed by The Sun (down 16% to 21.9 million) and US News (down 14% to 19.6 million). Some 15 sites saw month-on-month growth, with Newsweek the most visited site to see a boost – up 21% to 82.3 million. Datasets are based on direct measurement (i.e. websites and apps that choose to share first-party analytics with Similarweb); contributory networks that aggregate device data; partnerships and public data extraction from websites and apps.
As other ICE proposals have surfaced, officials in Social Circle, Georgia, El Paso, Texas, and Roxbury Township, New Jersey, all have raised concerns about a lack of water and sewer capacity to transform warehouses into detention sites. Models are trained on everything from academic papers, to news reports, to YouTube comments. What’s more, some of the activity on Moltbook appears to be driven primarily by humans nudging — or in some cases directing — their agents to post certain things.
All but two of the ten most-visited sites in the US in September saw year-on-year traffic growth. Another notable riser was local publisher SF Gate (up six places to 36th on the back of a 0.4% month-on-month traffic drop, to 29.3 million) and libertarian blog Zero Hedge (25.2 million), which rose five places to 40th despite a 7.7% traffic decline. The only site to see a larger rise in visits compared with August was CBS News, where traffic rose 20.7% to 92.5 million, translating to a five-place rise on the charts. September saw the re-entry of The Atlantic into the top 50 (visits down 0.2% month-on-month but up 15.2% year-on-year to 22.9 million) after it dropped off in August. The only riser JIRCAS: International research program within the top ten, besides new entrant Forbes, was People, which was up one spot despite visits dropping 9.5% month-on-month to 147.2 million.
NBC News, similarly, grew its traffic 112.5% compared with last year, while USA Today managed growth of 65.5%. The biggest fallers compared with December 2023 among the whole top 50 were UK tabloid The Sun (23 million, down 55%), The Los Angeles Times (19.4 million, down 33.2%) and Huffpost (43.6 million, down 21%). Among the nine websites to lose traffic month-on-month, five saw decreases of 2.1% or lower.
US & Canada news
The BBC recorded 100.2 million website visits in the US in July, according to digital intelligence platform Similarweb. Visits to bbc.com in the US were down 15% in July as the British public service broadcaster introduced a paywall to users in America. India Times (up 33% to 26.9 million), aggregator Newsbreak (32.2 million) and Alabama-focused al.com (18.9 million) also saw double-digit year-on-year growth in August.
The New York Post (down 34% to 93.5 million) and MSN (down 28%) saw the biggest year-on-year declines in the top ten. Sign up for Press Gazette’s weekly Future of Media US newsletter on Substack for more stories like this Men’s Journal therefore rejoined Press Gazette’s top 50 ranking, having also featured with significant growth in May and June 2025. Hollywood’s biggest names gathered at the Beverly Hilton for the 98th Academy Awards Luncheon Tuesday. “American Love Story” re-creates JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s life in NYC — where, a friend said, he would take off his shirt to lure the paparazzi. Heartbreaking photographs show the gutted four-story building, with most of its floors reduced to burnt rubble.
The sites in the list are based on Similarweb’s classification of news and media publishers, although Press Gazette refines the list to exclude some sites with a less journalistic focus. Across the top 50, 11 sites saw year-on-year growth, an improvement from just four seeing an increase in November. Forbes recorded the third highest month-on-month increase in visits, up 15% to 59.3 million. Northern Colorado’s Weld County, one of the fastest growing counties in the state, is looking to evolve their economic diversity in the decades to come.
Empowering a new generation of swimmers, Swem School breaks barriers and builds trust in metro-Atlanta’s Black communities—one first lap at a time. The three videos show what happened before and after the shooting by a Border Patrol agent on Oct. 4, 2025, in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. In 2024, we won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for our compelling, multi-country photojournalism showing migration from Central America to the United States. These include 59 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in the categories for which we can compete. From news and media to global brands and institutions, we have the content, services and tools businesses like yours rely on. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, that will help power its first-of-its kind local news program to support the U.S. local news ecosystem.
Among the ten biggest sites by number of visits, celebrity newsbrand People was the fastest growing year-on-year for a second month (140.2 million visits, up 31%). In September, the news division saw a spike as it increased 54% month on month (the biggest leap compared to August in the whole top 50 ranking) and 5% year on year to 96.6 million. Among the ten biggest news websites by volume of visits, USA Today was the fastest-growing for a third month in a row. Visits to the UK publisher’s site were up 29% month-on-month to 24.3 million, making it the second-fastest growing news site in the US, according to data from digital intelligence platform, Similarweb. Newsweek was once again the fastest-growing news website in the US in June 2023, notching 15% month-on-month growth to 110.2 million visits. All but eight of the 50 most-visited news sites in the US saw traffic growth in March compared to February, with a third seeing at least 10% growth in the longer month.