Business
Visualized: The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers by Daily Circulation
Visualized: The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers by Daily Circulation
Most people todayโmore than 8 in 10 Americansโget their news via digital devices, doing their reading on apps, listening to podcasts, or scrolling through social media feeds.
It’s no surprise then that over the last year, only one U.S. newspaper of the top 25 most popular in the country saw positive growth in their daily print circulations.
Based on data from Press Gazette, this visual stacks up the amount of daily newspapers different U.S. publications dole out and how thatโs changed year-over-year.
Extra, Extra โ Read All About It
The most widely circulated physical newspaper is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by a long shotโsending out almost 700,000 copies a day. But it is important to note that this number is an 11% decrease since 2021.
Hereโs a closer look at the data.
Rank | Newspaper | Average Daily Print Circulation | Year-Over-Year Change |
---|---|---|---|
#1 | Wall Street Journal | 697,493 | โ11% |
#2 | New York Times | 329,781 | โ9% |
#3 | USA Today | 159,233 | โ13% |
#4 | Washington Post | 159,040 | โ12% |
#5 | New York Post | 146,649 | โ2% |
#6 | Los Angeles Times | 142,382 | โ14% |
#7 | Chicago Tribune | 106,156 | โ16% |
#8 | Star Tribune | 103,808 | โ9% |
#9 | Tampa Bay Times | 102,266 | โ26% |
#10 | Newsday | 97,182 | โ12% |
#11 | Seattle Times | 86,406 | โ10% |
#12 | Honolulu Star-Advertiser | 79,096 | โ5% |
#13 | Arizona Republic | 70,216 | โ10% |
#14 | Boston Globe | 68,806 | โ11% |
#15 | Dallas Morning News | 65,369 | โ10% |
#16 | Houston Chronicle | 65,084 | โ17% |
#17 | Philadelphia Inquirer | 61,180 | โ20% |
#18 | San Francisco Chronicle | 60,098 | โ12% |
#19 | Denver Post | 57,265 | โ13% |
#20 | Chicago Sun-Times | 57,222 | โ7% |
#21 | The Buffalo News | 56,005 | โ15% |
#22 | Daily News | 55,653 | โ18% |
#23 | Villages Daily Sun | 49,183 | 3% |
#24 | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | 48,246 | โ11% |
#25 | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | 47,832 | โ13% |
These papers, although experiencing negative growth when it comes to print, are still extremely popular and widely-read publications digitallyโnot only in the U.S., but worldwide.ย For example, the New York Times reported having reached 9 million subscribers globally earlier this year.
The one paper with increased print circulation was The Villages Daily Sun, which operates out of a retirement community in Florida. Elderly people tend to be the most avid readers of print papers.ย Another Florida newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, was the worst performer at -26%.
In total, 2,500 U.S. newspapers have shut down since 2005. One-third of American newspapers are expected to be shuttered by 2025. This particularly impacts small communities and leaves many across America in ‘news deserts.’
Print vs. Digital Newspapers
Regardless of printโs downturn, digital subscriptions remain much higher for most of these papers. As one example, The Washington Post has over 3 million online subscribers, compared to their 159,000 print readers.
To put things in perspective, around 24 million print papers now circulate throughout the U.S. on any given day. But looking back at the industryโs peak in the 1980s, almost 64 million were distributed on any given weekday.
And digital is not done growing. Newsroom hires have been ramping up for โdigital-nativeโ news sitesโpublications that started online and never had a print version. On the flipside, employment at traditional papers has more than halved since 2008.
Problems with Media
American news media can be extremely divisive. Many newsrooms across the country play into fear, sensationalism, and partisan politics.
Digital news only makes this worse, utilizing algorithms designed to keep a personโs eyes on the page longer, pushing stories with narratives a person shows interest in, and often taking them down a rabbit hole of fringe informationโsometimes towards the extremes.
Additionally, the business of journalism is an increasingly less lucrative industry. Most revenue comes from digital ads running on news sitesโso rather than selling the news to consumers, it’s the time and attention of consumers that is being sold to advertisers. Furthermore, some of the best quality content is locked up behind subscription-based paywalls.
Print may actually be one way to avoid some of the more obvious issues, particularly because thereโs no way to track the data on which stories you read. But all publications still have inherent bias, of course, and it’s clear that print papers are not bouncing back any time soon.
Technology
Ranked: The Top 50 Most Visited Websites in the World
In this visualization, we rank the top 50 websites that receive the most internet traffic, from Google to CNN.

Ranked: The Top 50 Most Visited Websites in the World
Estimates vary, but there are upwards of two billion websites in existence in 2023.
If we were to rank all of these websites according to their traffic numbers, we would see a classic power law distribution. At the low end, the vast majority of these websites would be inactive, receiving little to no traffic. On the upper end of the ranking though, a handful of websites receive the lion’s share of internet traffic.
This visualization, using data from SimilarWeb, takes a look at the 50 websites that currently sit at the top of the ranking.
Which Websites Get the Most Traffic?
Topping the list of most-visited websites in the world is, of course, Google. With over 3.5 billion searches per day, Google has cemented its position as the go-to source for information on the internet. But Google’s dominance doesn’t stop there. The company also owns YouTube, the second-most popular website in the world. Together, Google and YouTube have more traffic than the next 48 websites combined.
The power of YouTube, in particular, is sometimes not fully understood. The video platform is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. As well, YouTube has the second highest duration-of-visit numbers in this top 50 ranking. (First place goes to the Chinese video sharing website, Bilibili.)
But Google and YouTube aren’t the only big players on the internet. Other websites in the top 50 ranking include social media giants Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In particular, TikTok has seen a surge in popularity in recent years and is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
Here’s the full top 50 ranking table form:
Rank | Website | Monthly Traffic | Category | Country |
---|---|---|---|---|
#1 | google.com | 85.1B | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#2 | youtube.com | 33.0B | Streaming & Online TV | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#3 | facebook.com | 17.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#4 | twitter.com | 6.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#5 | instagram.com | 6.1B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#6 | baidu.com | 5.0B | Search Engines | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#7 | wikipedia.org | 4.8B | Dictionaries & Encyclopedias | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#8 | yandex.ru | 3.4B | Search Engines | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#9 | yahoo.com | 3.3B | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#10 | whatsapp.com | 2.9B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#11 | xvideo.com | 2.8B | Adult | ๐จ๐ฟ Czechia |
#12 | amazon.com | 2.6B | Marketplace | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#13 | pornhub.com | 2.5B | Adult | ๐จ๐ฆ Canada |
#14 | xnxx.com | 2.3B | Adult | ๐ซ๐ท France |
#15 | live.com | 2.1B | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. | |
#16 | yahoo.co.jp | 2.1B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#17 | netflix.com | 2.0B | Streaming & Online TV | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#18 | tiktok.com | 1.8B | Social Media Networks | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#19 | docomo.ne.jp | 1.8B | Telecommunications | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#20 | reddit.com | 1.7B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#21 | office.com | 1.6B | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#22 | linkedin.com | 1.6B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#23 | dzen.ru | 1.4B | Faith & Beliefs | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#24 | samsung.com | 1.4B | Consumer Electronics | ๐ฐ๐ท S. Korea |
#25 | vk.com | 1.4B | Social Media Networks | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#26 | xhamster.com | 1.3B | Adult | ๐จ๐พ Cyprus |
#27 | turbopages.org | 1.3B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ท๐บ Russia |
#28 | mail.ru | 1.2B | ๐ท๐บ Russia | |
#29 | naver.com | 1.2B | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฐ๐ท S. Korea |
#30 | bing.com | 1.2B | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#31 | microsoftonline.com | 1.1B | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#32 | discord.com | 1.1B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#33 | twitch.tv | 1.1B | Gaming & Accessories | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#34 | bilibili.com | 1.0B | Animations & Comics | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#35 | pinterest.com | 1.0B | Social Media Networks | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#36 | zoom.us | 985.9M | Computers Electronics & Tech | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#37 | weather.com | 985.7M | Weather | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#38 | qq.com | 907.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐จ๐ณ China |
#39 | microsoft.com | 902.3M | Prog. & Developer Software | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#40 | msn.com | 870.8M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#41 | globo.com | 840.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ง๐ท Brazil |
#42 | duckduckgo.com | 839.0M | Search Engines | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#43 | roblox.com | 795.7M | Gaming & Accessories | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#44 | quora.com | 775.9M | Dictionaries & Encyclopedias | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#45 | news.yahoo.co.jp | 749.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฏ๐ต Japan |
#46 | ebay.com | 728.0M | Marketplace | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#47 | aajtak.in | 724.1M | News & Media Publishers | ๐ฎ๐ณ India |
#48 | nytimes.com | 702.2M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#49 | realsrv.com | 688.0M | Adult | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
#50 | cnn.com | 684.9M | News & Media Publishers | ๐บ๐ธ U.S. |
Notable companies that have fallen out of the top 50 since our last version of this visualization are Walmart and PayPal. Notable entrants into the top 50 are Samsung and the New York Times.
The Geography of the 50 Most-Visited Websites
The United States is still home base for many of the world’s biggest websites, taking up 30 spots on this ranking. Of these 30 websites, half are operated by Big Tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Netflix.
Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea round out the top five.
Things get interesting in the “other” category, which includes six websites. Two spots are taken up by Aaj Tak and Globo, which are large media publications in India and Brazil, respectively.
The remaining four websitesโXVideos, PornHub, XHamster, and XNXXโspecialize in adult content, and are located in a variety of countries. These are often referred to as “tube sites” since they are built on the YouTube model.
Realsrv, the only adult-oriented site in the top 50 located in the U.S., is interesting to delve into as well, since it’s far from a household name. The website essentially supports advertising efforts by redirecting users away from the content they were viewing over to another page (generally premium adult content). This is one of the key ways that adult websites earn revenue.
Where does this data come from?
Source: SimilarWeb
Notes: Websites listed include “all meaningful subdomains”, and categories in the graphic follow SimilarWeb’s categorization system. This is the third version of this graphic. As with previous versions, we aim to use data from November for the sake of consistency and to avoid seasonal fluctuations in traffic. One important detail to point out is that website traffic does not include app traffic, which is why popular platforms like WeChat don’t appear in this ranking.
-
Markets2 weeks ago
The Biggest Global Risks of 2023
-
Markets4 weeks ago
Top Heavy: Countries by Share of the Global Economy
-
Politics1 week ago
Visualizing the Worldโs Top 25 Fleets of Combat Tanks
-
Money4 weeks ago
U.S. Inflation: How Much Have Prices Increased?
-
Energy1 week ago
The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns (2013-2022)
-
Misc4 weeks ago
Infographic: The Longest Lasting Cars, in Miles
-
Politics1 week ago
Which Countries are the Most Polarized?
-
Markets3 weeks ago
The U.S. Stock Market: Best and Worst Performing Sectors in 2022