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 Independent is one of several UK newsbrands along with The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Express and the BBC that have recently put focus on expansion in the US. The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (107.7 million visits) in tenth, one place ahead of the BBC (101 million). UK newsbrand The Independent (25.7 million, up 44%) also made the top ten for growth, ranking 39th in the top 50. Newsweek was the fastest-growing FoodUnfolded: Growing crops from the past news site in the US in February while climate news startup The Cooldown entered the list in 42nd position, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.
The only other site in the top ten to see growth both compared to September 2024 and August 2025 was The New York Times, up 9% month on month and 3% year on year to 461.6 million visits in first place. NBC News was up 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, putting it in tenth place. The BBC and NBC News saw the most traffic growth among the ten biggest news websites in the US in September, according to the latest Similarweb data. Ten news websites saw their monthly visits decline by 40% or more in November compared to a year earlier, according to the latest data from Similarweb.
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- Meanwhile the vast majority (44) saw fewer visits than they did a year earlier in July 2024.
- 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.
- The site received 374% more visits in August 2024 than in August 2023, reaching 29.6 million.
The most notable result of the change appears to be that it has bounced CNN (525 million visits) ahead of The New York Times (385.7 million) to retake the top spot on the traffic ranking. Year-on-year, however, the fastest growth was at sports publisher Athlon Sports, which has been the case among the US top 50 every month since May. Further down the rankings The Daily Beast was the highest debuting publication, entering the top 50 at 39th place after seeing traffic rise 22% month-on-month to 30 million. Mail Online remained steady at ninth place with 122.2 million visits while Google News (120.8 million) jumped three places to tenth despite losing 4% of traffic month-on-month, displacing Newsweek (115.7 million) from the top ten. But in August People.com (162.6 million visits) and Yahoo Finance (162.8 million) were the only top ten sites to continue growing their traffic, by 3% and 2% respectively.
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The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (119.8 million visits) although it dropped one place to eleventh from tenth in the past month. The Independent was one of the fastest-growing news sites in the US in January, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking. The New York Times (456.7 million visits) remained the biggest newsbrand in the US by number of visits, followed by CNN (372.8 million), MSN, Fox News and People. At the other end of the list however, Microsoft news aggregator MSN (247.4 million visits) and News Corp’s New York Post (124.9 million) saw the biggest year-on-year slumps at 17% each. People (up 30% year-on-year), USA Today (up 20%) and Yahoo Finance (up 14%) saw the biggest increases in visits compared to February 2023.
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Newsweek was followed by Axios (25 million visits, up 88% year-on-year) and Politico (50.7 million, up 51%). Visits to People.com were up 27% year-on-year to reach 145.7 million, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb. The remainder of the top ten either declined year-on-year or in the case of the New York Times (up 1%) and the New York Post (down 1%) registered virtually no change in traffic. Since November Similarweb has excluded the figures for edition.cnn.com in its report to Press Gazette since they are counted under the main domain. AP News (98.8 million, up 21%) and Variety (43.8 million, up 19%) also saw growth of over or close to a fifth.