Here is a list of the top 10 conservative news websites in America as ranked by the estimated number of monthly searches for each site. The search volume data comes from the search engine optimization tool AHREFs. And as for what constitutes a “conservative” outlet, The Media Bias Chart® by Ad Fontes Media was referenced, which plots major news outlets on a left-to-right spectrum by assigning each a bias score.
None of the opinions or editorial decisions of the below outlets are endorsed by me or OutKick, just calling it how it is.
Onto the list, starting at No. 10:
10. The Daily Caller - Estimated Monthly Searches: 382K
Tucker Carlson and his old college roommate Neil Patel, a former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, founded The Daily Caller in 2010 as a conservative counter to Arianna Huffington’s rapidly ascending Huffington Post. The site grew quickly, turning a profit just two years after its creation.
Tucker became less involved with the day-to-day operations of the site in 2016 into 2017 after assuming his primetime role on Fox News, and then he stepped away all together in 2020, selling his stake back to Patel.
Since then searches for the site show a bit of a downward trajectory.
But as it still is today, The Daily Caller is a mainstream conservative news website with deep ties in Washington, whose contributors have included the likes of Newt Gingrich, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and Ann Coulter.
9. The Epoch Times - Estimated Monthly Searches: 397K
Certainly the most mysterious entry on this list. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by a Chinese American dissident named John Tang, who is an adherent to a new wave eastern religious movement called Falun Gong. A movement that the Chinese Communist Party sought to eliminate in the late 1990s as it enforced state sponsored atheism.
The site’s original purpose was to challenge the totalitarian rise of the Chinese Communist Party, while assisting Chinese Americans in assimilating to life in the United States.
Searches for The Epoch Times surged in April of 2020 as the site was one of the first to openly speculate about the true origin of Covid and the Chinese government’s role in potentially covering it up. Though at the time their reporting was roundly dismissed as “conspiracy theory” and “misinformation,” it increasingly seems like they may have been onto something after all.
Searches for the site surged again in November and December of 2020 as it openly challenged the credibility of the presidential election results.
8. The Daily Wire - Estimated Monthly Searches: 439K
It was Andrew Breitbart who introduced the polemical wunderkind Ben Shapiro to the business-minded producer Jeremy Boreing in 2009. After a couple job stints here and there, the pair would form The Daily Wire in 2015 with a focus on personality driven journalism and digital distribution optimization, specifically on Facebook.
That focus has proven well placed. The Daily Wire is now one of the fastest growing news outlets in the world, featuring a plethora of high profile talent such as: novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan, best selling author of books with no words Michael Knowles, the Virginian Matt Walsh, and the fiery Candace Owens, as well as regular collaborations with the likes of Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager.
But it is the individual starpower of Shapiro which cannot be overstated. He is perhaps the most searched for political commentator in the world, accruing some 810K searches per month. More even than Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
7. The Blaze - Estimated Monthly Searches: 452K
Former Fox News personality Glenn Beck started The Blaze in 2010 before merging it with Mark Levin’s Conservative Review TV in 2018, forming The Blaze Media as we know it today.
Like The Daily Wire, The Blaze has a deep bench of conservative talent streaming on its services, including Beck himself, Dave Rubin, Jason Whitlock, Steven Crowder, Allie Beth Stuckey, and that guy from Duck Dynasty, Phil Robertson.
Since 2015 searches for The Blaze would indicate somewhat of a downtrend, but the growth in popularity of its individual personalities, especially Crowder, more than make up for it.
6. InfoWars - Estimated Monthly Searches: 974K
Say what you will about Alex Jones, and there is plenty to say, but simply put, he’s amassed a sizable following for his InfoWars.
Searches for the outlet spiked big time during both the 2016 and 2020 elections, but even in between those inflecting events, searches for the site remain steady.
5. The New York Post - Estimated Monthly Searches: 1.2M
Founded in 1801 by none other than Alexander Hamilton, as the mouthpiece for his Federalist Party, The New York Post is America’s oldest continuously published newspaper. The modern era of The Post can be traced back to 1976 when Rupert Murdoch purchased it, eventually rolling it into his News Corp. in 1993.
Recently it has been said The New York Post is the preferred newspaper of Donald Trump.
Since 2015, searches for The New York Post show steady and consistent growth. But it was in October of 2020 when searches for the site surged to all time highs. You’ll recall it was at this time when The Post published its Hunter Biden exposé, which was suppressed by big tech in an effort to protect Joe Biden just before the presidential election.
I guess this just goes to show, when you tell people they can’t see something, it only makes them want it that much more.
4. The Gateway Pundit - Estimated Monthly Searches: 2M
The Gateway Pundit was founded in 2004 by Jim Hoft to focus on the issues Heartland Americans care about and to expose the wickedness of the left. In just fifteen years Hoft took his one man blog and grew it into one of the internet’s largest destinations for conservative news and commentary.
All of this despite big tech’s best efforts to wipe the site clean off the internet. Internal Facebook reports show that The Gateway Pundit is considered a repeat misinformation offender, meaning content shared by the site is pushed to the bottom of its follower’s news feed even if engagement is high. Then Google recently demonetized Gateway Pundit’s domain by disallowing ads from serving on the site, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost dollars for Hoft and his site. And don’t forget about Twitter, which permanently banned Hoft’s personal account from the platform in early 2021.
But no matter, searches for the site are consistently up and to the right and went absolutely wild in December of 2020 as speculation around election integrity hit a crescendo.
3. Breitbart - Estimated Monthly Searches: 2.2M
You might say Andrew Breitbart is the single most important figure in the formation of conservatism as we know it today. He was the first to act on and popularize the observation that politics is downstream from culture. Winning elections is necessary and good. But the culture is the real prize.
The news outlet he founded under his namesake in 2007 was all predicated on that belief. And it quickly became the conservative vanguard in the culture war. The site would go on to give a number of influential if controversial conservatives a platform, including Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Steve Bannon.
Today the site is still a conservative cornerstone, showing consistently high levels of search volume under the guidance of now editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.
2. Newsmax - Estimated Monthly Searches: 3.8M
Founded in 1998 by Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax has always aspired to stand on equal footing with the gargantuan Fox News. And though that aspiration is unlikely to materialize anytime soon, on election night in November of 2020, Fox News did indeed grant Newsmax an opening.
You may recall how some conservatives became disenchanted with Fox News after the network announced that the key-swing-state of Arizona would be won by Biden when only 73% of the state’s votes were in. That call for Biden came in hours before the Associated Press and days before most major networks made the same declaration.
Even though it ended up being the right call, the timing and optics frustrated plenty of viewers. Viewers who then turned to Newsmax.
As it was then and in the days immediately after, searches for Newsmax soared. And while those searches have since slowed, Newsmax now has a baseline level of search volume that is easily 5x what it was prior to the election.
1. Fox News - 33M
What else is there to say that hasn’t already been said? Fox News amasses triple the number of searches than the rest of this list combined. And its search trajectory is steady, consistently up and to the right.
