The Drudge Report recorded 1.47 billion page views in July, the highest traffic in the conservative aggegation site’s 21-year history.
Drudge is typically a traffic monster, but SimilarWeb reported that July’s audience figures pushed the site ahead of Disney, Yahoo, Google and Time Warner among the most visited media publishers in the Unites States.
Drudge finished No. 2 overall among all U.S. media publishers, behind only MSN and its nearly 2 billion page views.
Drudge had been No. 3 overall in June but jumped ahead of Disney despite a significant disadvantage in visits from Facebook.
Disney had 33 million visitors from Facebook in the second quarter of 2016, compared to only 515,000 for Drudge. The overwhelming Facebook totals didn’t help Disney stay in front of Drudge, as the conservative news site jumped Disney to claim the No. 2 spot on the SimilarWeb list.
The ascendancy of Drudge Report comes even as the poll numbers have flagged for Donald Trump — whose campaign has gotten a big boost from Drudge since he entered the presidential race last summer.
Drudge’s numbers are remarkable, he’s essentially a one-man operation and his own news judgment runs the site. Drudge rose to fame back in 1998 when his coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal put him on the map in the early days of the Internet. Almost two decades later, Drudge is not only relevant but topping massive media corporations.
SimilarWeb tracks publications, in addition to publishers, and Drudge was behind only MSN during the month of July. Drudge’s news aggregation site topped Google News, ESPN, CNN, Fox News, BuzzFeed and the New York Times in page views, according to the data.
The top story on Drudge for most of Monday morning as a link to a tweet comparing the hairstyles of Trump and Hillary Clinton, with the message “After shifting policies to mirror Trump… now she copies his hair!” He did post a tiny headline, linking to the SimilarWeb data.
Somewhere, a SimilarWeb editor is smiling at the traffic bump Drudge provided.