Drudge Report keeps growing
Cory Bergman April 3rd, 2007
In a message posted on the site, the Drudge Report says it set a traffic record last month with 425 million home page views, up from 287 million last March. “Many thanks for your continued support… The lovers and the haters… and the ones that still find the internet tops for news and information,” the message reads, likely written by founder Matt Drudge. The Drudge Report launched 12 years ago, produces very little original content which isn’t always accurate, rakes in hundreds of thousands of ad dollars a month (just a $1 average CPM for 425M pageviews is $425,000) and has never undergone a redesign. But it does a great job aggregating interesting stories and keeping them fresh.
Adds anonymous: “His traffic is at the lowest in 5 years, check Alexa. He just keeps upping the auto refresh rate. That’s called ad fraud. He also hotlinks all his images without permission or attribution. That’s called copyright infringement and bandwidth theft.”
Adds Corey: “Let’s not start using Alexa as a legitimate and accurate source, shall we?”
Adds Charles: “It’s a interesting aggretator, but it rarely even has any hard news. It’s degraded into tabloid, entertainment and ‘back-of-the-book’ stories, but that’s about it.”
18 Comments Add your own
1. Allen | April 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Still probably one of the worst designed sites on the net, but hey, if it ain’t broke….
2. News Consumer | April 3rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
There’s something to be said for utilitarian design. Besides, the simple design probably helps keep his bandwidth requirements and hosting costs down.
3. Anonymous | April 3rd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
His traffic is at the lowest in 5 years, check Alexa. He just keeps upping the auto refresh rate. That’s called ad fraud. He also hotlinks all his images without permission or attribution. That’s called copyright infringement and bandwidth theft.
4. Jason P | April 3rd, 2007 at 5:11 pm
He also consistently reports things that are wrong and malicious. That’s called libel.
5. Charles | April 3rd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
He also pretty much reports any and every rumor about any politico that has a mistress. Remember when he broke the stories that Bush and Kerry had mistresses? And even the women in question said “HUH?”
It’s a interesting aggretator, but it rarely even has any “hard” news. It’s degraded into tabloid, entertainment and “back-of-the-book” stories, but that’s about it. So sad…
6. invitedmedia | April 3rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
hey, at least his stuff is FRESH.
i can point you to a page on a local affiliate site of a billion dollar enterprise that has gone untouched since 2-0-0-5.
that’s right, 2005.
one begins to think the idea is to drive people…AWAY.
and the page in question is the “advertise on this site” page too.
uhboy
7. George Creedle | April 3rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I’ve noticed the auto-refreshing and assumed that was to inflate page views.
8. Corey Spring | April 3rd, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Let’s not start using Alexa as a legitimate and accurate source, shall we?
9. radio guy | April 3rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Amen to that. Alexa uses it’s “toolbar” tracking stats as one of the basis for it traffic reporting
10. Drudge Fan | April 4th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Am a Drudge fan and read the site daily, but am confused about this auto refresh thing. Do advertisers accept that as part of the page count? Don’t the sites correct for that sort of thing? That is, I can’t just hit refresh all day on a site to jack up the stats?
11. invitedmedia | April 4th, 2007 at 5:09 am
i’d say you have just as accurate stats using alexa as any nielsen numbers… perhaps even better than.
this new “total time spent” is really gonna piss off station groups who, after 10 yrs. online, can’t seem to grasp linking to even their OWN properties.
12. Chris | April 4th, 2007 at 6:20 am
“Wrong”, “Malicious”, “Incorrect”, and “Libel”? Compared to what, the NY Times and WaPo, who constantly have to post corrections? Compared to Dan Rather?
Drudge is what it is…it’s an aggregator. He’s not a journalist (despite his funny hat). Even his breaking stories, like Lewinsky, are stories that are ABOUT to break in other newsrooms….Drudge simply scoops other reporters, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
His site also has a decent balance of “hard news” versus tabloid stuff…and it’s pretty centrist as well, according to a recent Pew study of bias in media outlets.
But bad web design? Yeah. It always makes me nostalgic for 1994.
Chris
13. David Johnson | April 4th, 2007 at 7:50 am
uh…. just curious on this and have to challenge it, because i hear it a lot in relation to drudge. if a site is an “aggregator” of other news content, how can it “scoop” other reporters?
in order to “scoop” a news competitor, you have to do it with an exclusive, which means it has to be your own original content that no one else has. it isn’t really a legitimate scoop to post unconfirmed rumors and allegations or steal information from reporters and post it while editors are vetting the facts. drudge has been lucky, and has kept a purposely low profile, brokered other reporting, and taken less risks recently, because he now has enough traffic and associated revenue that he could be sued and he could be financially hurt if he gets it wrong.
yahoo, which is the largest online news destination, produces very little original news content, unlike MSNBC, the second largest online news destination, which invests heavily in generating original and exclusive content across a wide enterprise of companion brands and affiliates. yahoo buys or partners with news producers, services and agencies. it has always focused on web services, so it makes sense that it provides the ultimate hosted aggregator service — but it doesn’t “scoop” its content partners and news providers. it is merely a distribution channel or companion outlet.
and FYI, published corrections are a valued part of professional journalism. no one _has_ to post corrections, but good journalists do and bad ones don’t. self-policing your product, admitting mistakes and correcting the facts in search of the highest degree of truth is part of building and maintaining the public trust. corrections policies have been a very big issue for us since we began grappling with the differences in our online news products and the published paper of record. as a rule, we trust outlets that correct themselves.
also, dumpster diving at newsweek isn’t even in the same league as being on the scene at JFK’s assassination, covering watergate or reporting from hot zones in vietnam. no matter how it went down at the end, rather’s entire body of work (he has always attracted controversy) speaks for itself.
14. Vlajbert | April 7th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Your slamming auto-refresh? Hello, pot.
I could care less what he does or how he does it. The the referral traffic from him is a wonderful thing. Nice and big.
15. Norb | March 5th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Does anyone know how to stop the auto refresh? While I am trying to read the bottom part of the page I have to keep hitting page down to go back where I was every time it refreshes.
16. Norb | March 21st, 2008 at 6:03 am
I have found discovered that the Drudge Report auto refresh can be disabled in Firefox by selecting Tools, Options, and removing the checkmark from “Enable Javascript” .
Now I can read the bottom part of the page without it jumping to the top when it auto refreshes.
You may have to re-enable it when filling out online forms, etc.
17. Jim | March 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I user Avant browser which is a very good free enhanced IE based browser. To disable Drudge and others from auto-refresh, you just select Tools>Disable Scripts, open Drudge and Voila!- no more auto-refresh.
18. jim | March 26th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Another good way to foil Drudge auto refresh is to open it thru http://www.proxybin.com a free anonymous surf site. It blocks scripts and that keeps the auto refresh from working.
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed