Thursday, August 21, 2008

Drudge Report Leads Sessions Per User for July

Despite its bland, three-column format, Drudgereport.com is still the king of online news.

Drudge's overall format, a vertical list of headlines, hasn't been enhanced or tweaked, but it's appeal remains strong, with an average 20.5 sessions per user. Started by Matt Drudge, it still leads Fox News, CNN,Google and Yahoo News as one of the top destination for news junkies around the world, including yours truly.Many radio show hosts rely on Drudge to provide a list of talking points throughout each show.

The site gained nationwide attention in the late 90s when it served as the unofficial source for breaking news in the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair. Ten years later, Bill and Hillary are still together, and Drudge's visitors have also remained loyal to their first love.

So what's Drudge's secret formula?  A combination of simplicity familiarity. Loyal users don't expect anything fancy, and unique visitors may initially scoff at the lackluster design, but people are still drawn to major stories. Readers are just too lazy to go find them. Drudge doesn't bother to bombard you with streaming video or polls (with the exception of a few primary nights), he just does the story-digging for you and provides the links. He also provides a list of national and internation newspapers and columnists, sorted alphabetically for easy navigation.

The lesson here is simple: Recognize your strengths- Drudge is where it is today because it hasn't strayed from the core phillosophy that lured its viewers from day one.

By Matt O'Hern at 08:52 AM | Comments (2)

(2) Thoughts on Drudge Report Leads Sessions Per User for July

Does he still auto-refresh his page every 30 seconds or so? Haven't checked in a while. That's bound to skew his stats, though.

Comments by kpaul : Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 01:45 PM

Yes he does still force-refresh his page every 30 seconds. I've wondered why measuring tools STILL don't factor that in after all these years (especially given the fact that advertising revenue is based on original hits). I can't even finish glancing through headlines before I've already been counted twice. I mean his stats have got to be at least -- AT LEAST -- inflated by double what they actually are (and probably exponentially more so, given that many reporters have Drudge as their home page, it just force reloads and counts those ticks over and over and over).

Comments by joe darling : Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 04:14 PM

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