Breitbart’s 27-month losing streak is over.
For the first time since March 2017, the conservative news and commentary site didn’t lose traffic, according to the data-tracking firm Comscore. In fact, it posted an 8% increase in traffic in July over the previous year, recording 6.4 million unique visits compared to 5.9 million in July 2018.
“A busy month of major news events and headline-grabbing tweets from President Trump helped drive more traffic to Breitbart,” said Howard Polskin, president and chief curator for TheRighting, which uses ComScore data to rank right-leaning sites by traffic each month.
Breitbart, which as recently as December had led all right-leaning sites tracked by TheRighting aside from FoxNews.com, also gained some ground on some of its rivals last month.
In June, Breitbart was ranked sixth on his list, coming in behind Fox News, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, The Blaze and the Daily Caller. In July, Breitbart ranked fourth, behind Fox, the Examiner and The Blaze. (Polskin includes Fox News’ website in his right-leaning site traffic ranking each month, though it does contain a considerable amount of straight news reporting.)
A representative for Breitbart did not immediately return request for comment.
Breitbart, a once-dominant force in conservative media circles, still trailed whose former executive chairman, Steve Bannon, entered Donald Trump’s White House after the election his coverage helped shape, has since seen a steep audience drop, and a declining position among right-leaning websites.
And while traffic on most politically oriented news sites has dropped significantly recently, the decline has been particularly acute for Breitbart. Monthly traffic on Breitbart plummeted nearly 72% from 17.3 million in January 2017, when Trump took office, to 4.9 million in June 2019, according to Comscore.
Polskin credited a busy news month for the growth in traffic at Breitbart and other sites. “Stories that dominated headlines across all spectrums of the media in July included Trump’s tweet encouraging four congresswomen to return to their ‘corrupt countries,’ the mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, Robert Mueller’s testimony before two House committees, Trump’s disparaging description of Baltimore, and the second round of debates by Democratic candidates for president,” Polskin said. “Audiences on the right went to a variety of conservative websites, Breitbart included, for breaking news, analysis and opinion.”
Fox News also saw a win in the last month: It clocked its seventh consecutive month of traffic growth in 2019.