Leading news websites in the U.S. 2020, by unique visitors

As of August 2020, the most popular news website in the United States was Yahoo News, with 175 million unique monthly visitors. Following closely behind was Google News with 150 million monthly visitors, before Huffington Post and CNN with 110 and 95 million unique visitors per month respectively.

News consumption in the U.S.

Despite the huge number of web visits enjoyed by news sites each month, Americans get their news in a variety of ways. Some news consumers in the U.S. like to access news brands via a mobile device. For example, CNN was the most popular news brand among mobile only users in 2018, with 28.4 million consumers accessing CNN’s content exclusively via mobile.

Additionally, a survey revealed that 43 percent of U.S. internet users get their news from Facebook, making the platform the most popular social network for news by a significant margin. However, social media is the least trusted news source in North America, with the majority of surveyed U.S. adults citing traditional media as being more trustworthy.

Do people trust news?

Trust in news sources has become increasingly important to the American news consumer amidst the spread of fake news, and consumers are more vocal about whether or not they have faith in a source to report news correctly. Ongoing discussions about the credibility, accuracy and bias of news networks, anchors, TV show hosts and news media professionals mean that those looking to keep up to date tend to be more cautious than ever before, and many voters have even expressed concern about the influence of fake news on voters and elections.