Drudge loads 800,000,000 pages in October '08

04.11.2008
If Howard Stern and Oprah are the king and queen of all media, then Matt Drudge is the king of politics. His DrudgeReport is responsible for driving news agendas, political campaigns, scandals and more.

Some Drudge haters point to his not-incredible unique visitor numbers (somewhere around 2 million per month in the US) as an indication that Drudge doesn't have the reach or power that sites like Huffington Post (5 million plus in the US) have. However, that ignores the fact that Drudge has a solid core of massively influential readers -- news directors, radio hosts, editors and politicians come to the site day after day to see the next headline he blares across his page.

Nielsen tracks his visits per unique visitor numbers at about 20 per month, which, if stretched out over the course of a month, would equal nearly one visit per workday. These numbers also ignore the 3-minute auto-refresh that Drudge activates on his page. If the auto-refresh data is included, that raises the total page-view numbers to a new high, as Drudge is proud to proclaim:

THANKS FOR MAKING OCTOBER 2008 THE BIGGEST MONTH IN DRUDGEREPORT'S 13 YEAR HISTORY! THE PAGE WAS VIEWED 798,524,935 TIMES FROM 153,563,619 VISITS FOR MONTH, NEARLY 6X SITE'S TRAFFIC IN OCTOBER '04... AND SOMEHOW IT FEELS LIKE IT'S ONLY JUST STARTING...