Lazaro Gamio / Axios
Breitbart News, the right-wing nationalist and flamboyantly pro-Trump website, is rapidly growing its online reach and engagement. By some measures, it's overtaken some of the most established news and consumer brands.
Why this matters: Breitbart's traffic growth comes as it expands its political influence in Washington. Former chairman Steve Bannon is Trump's chief strategist and 2 former Breitbart journalists have gone to work at the White House; former national security editor Sebastian Gorka is a deputy assistant to the president, and former reporter Julia Hahn will be working under Bannon.
By the numbers:
- Breitbart has moved ahead of The Washington Post, Fox News, Walmart and Yelp on the Alexa top sites ranking that combines measures of visitors and pageviews.
- According to comScore, Breitbart's number of unique visitors has grown 62% in the past three years. The site's reach, or the amount of unique visitors it attracts, is now larger than established political websites, like The Hill and Politico.
- Visitors spent 3.7 minutes on the site per visit in December, compared with 3.3 average minutes per day spent on The Huffington Post and The New York Times.
- Breitbart was one of the most-engaged news websites on Facebook in 2016, according to Newswhip, surpassing CBS News, Yahoo! and NPR. (Engagement is based off of likes, comments, shares and reactions on Facebook.)