by Ray Schultz
Source: www.mediapost.com, January 2023
The fastest-growing news channel in America is not a blazing investigative site: It is Forever Mom, a website featuring advice for mothers, according to Digital 100 News & Media Winner: Forever Mom, a study by Similarweb.
Forever Mom generated strong referral and display ad traffic. Another parenting site, ParentMood, also showed strong growth, the study reports, while speculating that the COVID baby boom is contributing to this success.
But sites reporting global news, including reports from crisis zones, also did well.
Traffic in general was up 748.2% on the top 10 sites, according to the study, which is done annually.
This year’s top 10 sites and their growth rates are:
- forever-mom.com (features for moms)—1316.3%
- liveuamap.com (Maps and links to news and global crisis zones)—911.3%
- worldtravelling.com (Travel blog)—731.1%
- eurasiantimes.com (Global digital news, founders India & Canada)—707.8%
- parentmood.comwordsa.com (Parenting features)—513.2%
- tododisca.com (Spanish-language news on disability, the elderly and health)—487.8%
- cowboystatedaily.com (Wyoming news site)—462.4%
- theaviationgeekclub.com (Pilots, military & space)—438.9%
- theappear.com (Lifestyle and features)—419.2%
Mobile web users comprised of Forever Mom’s audiences. They were more likely to go directly to the site, although the referrals channel was second in traffic generation.
The Live Universal Awareness Map, which covered the Ukraine war and other news, was ranked across multiple geographies, coming in first in France and Germany and second in the U.K. and U.S. Of all the sites, it drove the most traffic from search, social and direct traffic channels, for a traffic share of 46.36%.
Eurasiatimes.com achieved a 28.83% traffic share, with none of the others coming close.
One must ask why The New York Times isn’t on the list.
“Of the larger mainstream news sites, nytimes.com didn’t make it into our top 10 but still showed impressive growth, with traffic up 55%, year-over-year, to about 500 million monthly visits – even if that growth may have owed more to its cooking site and acquisition of the Wordle word game than to hard news coverage,” the study notes.
The study offers this disclaimer: “All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data.”
The report was written by David F. Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb.
