'Worst Kind of Tabloid': Google Update Halves MailOnline's Daily Traffic

Globally, MailOnline is the most visited English-language newspaper website, ComScore crediting the site with 61.6 million unique desktop computer visitors for January 2014, ahead of The New York Times website.

Jesus Mendez, SEO Director at MailOnline — the web-based 'sister' title of The Daily Mail — has admitted publicly the site was massively impacted by the June 2019 Google core update, and has "lost 50 percent of daily traffic" as a result, with an additional 90 percent drop in Google Discover traffic.

"What's bizarre is we have a much more pronounced decline in the UK vs. the US. This is weird because the UK is our home region and historical drops have always been much more prominent in the US," he added.

Launched in 2003, MailOnline in 2014 became the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world, with over 11.34 million daily unique visitors daily in August 2014 alone.

However, the integrity of MailOnline's journalism has been called into question — as part of a feature allegedly designed to fight 'fake news', Microsoft browser 'Edge' warns users against trusting content on the site, asserting it "generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability" and "has been forced to pay damages in numerous high-profile cases". 

MailOnline is notorious for its "sidebar of shame", a box listing celebrity embarrassments and gossip. Actor George Clooney has described it as "the worst kind of tabloid", which "makes up its facts to the detriment of its readers" after it published a false story about his fiancee's family. It's nonetheless estimated 25 percent of the traffic received by the website is purely to access the entertainment and gossip stories.