Lmao, Politico is a left wing propaganda site, Rayon, learn your facts.. Btw, Trump's & Hillary's unfavorability numbers are within the margin of error now. My, how far she has fallen, lol.
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Under assault for liberal bias, Politicoâs traffic dives.
Internet traffic and Web search measurement tools from several sources indicate that despite massive promotion efforts
on MSNBC and in other venues, Politico.com is rapidly losing readers, especially outside of Washington, D.C.
Measurements of U.S. Web traffic provided to The Daily Caller by Compete, Inc. indicate that the number of total monthly visits to Politico.com dropped by 31.8 percent during the 18-month period that ended on October 31.
Yet a glowing
review of the news outlet published Wednesday by the American Journalism Review, a project of the University of Maryland Foundation, claimed it âreceives nearly 60 million pageviews per month from between 8 million and 11 million unique visitors.â
Jodi Enda, the articleâs author, wrote that she relied on Politicoâs âinternal trackingâ for those numbers.
Enda, a freelancing former Philadelphia Inquirer national correspondent who has also been published in the liberal American Prospect, Mother Jones and the Huffington Post, told The Daily Caller in a phone conversation that her âresearcherâ fact-checked the numbers. Enda did not, however, name that researcher.
Afterward, Politico confirmed to TheDC during a follow-up conversation that Enda contacted the publication to verify the numbers it had given her.
Enda also did not say whether she or anyone else verified Politicoâs self-reported Web traffic numbers against other, independent measurements.
âTracking numbers are all over the lot for online publications, so we used Politicoâs internal numbers and attributed the information accordingly,â she emailed The Daily Caller Thursday, in response to questions about her article.
Statistics provided to TheDC by Compete â one of many independent traffic arbiters â also show that from October 2009 through October 2011, total monthly visits to Politico.com dropped by more than 11.5 percent. And the average number of times each of Politicoâs readers actually visited the website declined by 24.7 percent during the same two-year period.
While Compete indicates that the number of âuniqueâ visitors to Politico.com increased by 17.4 percent during the same period, the raw number of unique visitors it reported for Politico in October 2011 was just 2.96 million â a number far lower than similar measurements provided to The Daily Caller by measurement services run by Nielsen, Inc., and comScore.
Lincoln Merrihew, Competeâs Managing Director of Business Insights, told TheDC that there could be two explanations for why Politicoâs readers are returning to the site less often than they used to.
âSo what you can say is that [either] the site is so much better, and therefore people are able to get all the news they need in fewer visits,â said Merrihew, âor itâs become much worse, and more confusing, therefore people are getting frustrated and visiting less.â
Competeâs online measurements show that
Politico.com suffered an 8.6 percent decrease in unique visitors between October 2010 and October 2011. By comparison,
HuffingtonPost.com enjoyed a 111 percent increase, and
DailyCaller.com increased its unique visitor traffic by 100 percent. Other news websites had similar growth.
Compete bases its conclusions on measurements taken from a sample of 2 million U.S. web surfers.
âWe stand by our numbers,â a Politico spokesman told The Daily Caller on Thursday, insisting that Politicoâs own traffic measurements â collected by Omniture, an Adobe program used to measure Web traffic data â were more accurate than any third-party measurements.
It is common for traffic figures generated internally by a websiteâs owner to be nearly double those compiled by independent analysts. Traffic-measuring firms like Compete, Nielsen, comScore and Experian take steps to correct for factors that skew results, including the double-counting of individuals who may visit a given website from home, work, mobile phones or Internet-ready gaming consoles.
Politicoâs spokesperson seemed to confirm this kind of over-counting bias, telling TheDC, âWe count every single hit to our site.â
In response to questions from The Daily Caller, Politico also declined to specify the period of time during which it took the Web traffic measurements it shared with Enda. Politico would only state that those numbers were recent, and that they represented a ârangeâ of visitor traffic.
Google
claims its âInsights for Searchâ product reflects âhow many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.â Politico receives a large portion of its traffic from Google â
16 percent, according to Alexa Internet, Inc.âs âclickstreamâ measurement.
According to Google, U.S. interest in Politico as a
news source rose 256 percent during the past three years. But Politicoâs influence appears strong only in those regions nearest to Washington, D.C.
Google
measures online interest on a relative scale from zero to 100, with the top end representing the highest level of interest. On this scale, as of Dec. 1, Politico receives its strongest rating â a score of 100 â from Web surfers in the District of Columbia.
Virginia and Maryland, the states nearest to D.C., provide Politicoâs second- and third-most âinterestedâ audiences, with scores of 35 and 33, respectively. (Politico is based in Virginia.)
From there, however, the numbers drop off precipitously. New York ranks fourth with an âinterestâ score of 20. Massachusetts and California were tied for fifth with scores of 16. Other states in the U.S. interior, including Iowa and Utah, showed zero interest.
By contrast, Endaâs Nov. 30 American Journalism Review story claimed âonly 11 percentâ of Politicoâs visitors âlive in the Washington area.â Again, Enda attributed this statistic to Politicoâs own âinternal tracking.â
Other news organizations enjoy a far more consistent appeal outside the D.C. beltway.
Google measurements from 2004 to the present indicate that
Bloomberg News has held a high level of appeal across the Northeast region of the United States. In order, New York scored 100, the District of Columbia scored 89, New Jersey scored 70, Connecticut scored 62 and Massachusetts scored 50.
Real Clear Politics demonstrated a high level of interest across an even broader geographic range during the same seven-year period. After its Politico-matching score of 100 from the District of Columbia and a rating of 65 from Maryland, Colorado placed third with a score of 58, New Mexico was fourth with 56, and Missouri ranked fifth with 55.
Politicoâs only self-published numbers, found in its online media kit, represent the first six months of 2009. According to that press kit, the âsite averaged on a monthly basisâ 3.23 million unique visitors â a number larger than the October 2011 figure of 2.96 million reported by Compete.
Website traffic to political websites varies according to the shifting winds of election cycles, increasing during presidential election years and falling at other times. Andrew Lipsman, Vice President of Industry Analysis at comScore, Inc., told TheDC he thought Politicoâs online traffic fits that mold.
âI think this is a site that gets more awareness with the election cycle,â Lipsman said.
comScore reported that 4.48 million U.S.-based visitors came to Politico.com during October. The measurements in Politicoâs media kit were generated by Nielsen Online, whose most recent statistics indicate that Politico.com had 4.2 million unique visitors in September. By comparison, the liberal Huffington Post had 29.7 million unique visitors during the same month.
The Daily Caller, a much newer offering than either the Huffington Post or Politico, had 2.8 million unique visitors during September.
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http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/02/under-assault-for-liberal-bias-politicos-traffic-dives/3/#ixzz497g9BA8hLmao, Politico is a left wing propaganda site, Ray... (